


under your spell

by djjdkim



Category: EXO (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Alternate Universe - Werewolf, Alternate Universe - Witchcraft, BaekKai, Domestic Fluff, Fluff, KaiBaek - Freeform, M/M, NOT GENDER BEND THOUGH, Romance, SeSoo, Soft Porn, Witchcraft, Witches, jongin and sehun are werewolves, kyungsoo and baekhyun are witches, like really really soft porn, there's some indirect smut, wolf - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-29
Updated: 2017-12-29
Packaged: 2019-02-23 10:35:32
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 22,000
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13188291
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/djjdkim/pseuds/djjdkim
Summary: The cottage in the woods started off with two very witchy, very magical inhabitants. Somehow, somewhere along the line, both of them finds themselves with their own big, fluffy wolf. And all of this stemmed from Baekhyun really, really fucking up with his magic.





	under your spell

**Author's Note:**

  * For [comebaekhome](https://archiveofourown.org/users/comebaekhome/gifts).



 

People used to tell the story of two witches who lived together in a cottage in the woods on the outskirts of a human village-- in fact, it used to be a fireplace favourite, a fairytale told between friends and their cans of beer late at night. But don’t misunderstand, it isn’t one of those tales where the teller stops in the middle to jump and frighten the friend next to him, spooking everyone around the circle with grotesque descriptions of the witches and the gruesome potions they brewed that shone a sickly green colour under the full moon.

No-- Baekhyun would be horrified to hear of the disgusting imagery we associate with witches.

He keeps his hair a little long in the back, donning a large, black witch hat, paired with heavy black eyeliner. His black hair falls down over one eye, and with his hat placed at a tilt, he’s able to hide his odd coloured eye from the curious villagers, one a pretty pink and the other a normal dark brown. They’re framed with cobweb-like fake lashes that he fell in love with when he went into town once during the festival the humans call Halloween. 

Aside from those, he likes to change up the earrings from the bunch he collected-- he likes the ones that dangle, silver that glints under sunshine, like how he wears shiny necklaces and thick black chokers around his neck too. Kyungsoo thinks it’s absolutely pointless to paint his nails, but Baekhyun always argues that it’s because his nails are naturally pretty, so it’s more important to highlight them, unlike Kyungsoo’s stubby, chewed nails.

Kyungsoo, the other inhabitant of the cottage in the woods.

Kyungsoo, the considerably less aesthetic witch, preferring to dress himself in simple black shirts and pants instead of the ridiculous shimmery purple cape Baekhyun throws on.

Though Baekhyun tries his best, uncoordinated and messy with all his potions and spells, he looks pretty doing it, and that satisfies him-- he’s far from being the worst witch out there, and leaves Kyungsoo to be competent at magic for the both of them, considering how much more practical in every way Kyungsoo seems to be.

But Baekhyun can be a little too ambitious at some times, and the slightest bit flamboyant at others, accepting Kyungsoo’s words of encouragement and pats on the back to try to turn a book into a bird again next time, perhaps after some pumpkin latte.

Baekhyun also perks up at that, eagerly following his lifelong friend into the cute kitchen nestled into the corner of their one storey cottage. He’d grin, sipping on the drink as Kyungsoo bustles about cleaning up-- yet Kyungsoo isn’t afraid to kick his ass when Baekhyun really fucks up.

Like turning a very much human friend into a wolf.

  
  


“Kyungsoo? Don’t freak out, but I may have accidentally turned Jongin into a wolf.”

“Okay,” Kyungsoo frowns, drawing out the word, and sandwiching his phone between his shoulder and ear. He shifts the shopping basket to his left hand to grab a bottle of mayonnaise with his right. “Turn him back?”

“Yeah, that’s the problem. I can’t really figure out how to.”

Kyungsoo swears loudly, before looking around and feeling his ears heat up at the strange looks other villagers send him. “Is that why you called me??”

“Yeah, can you help? Please?”

“Baekhyun, I don’t know how to do it either!”

“Well we have a bit of a problem then.”

“You turned our friend into a fucking  _ wolf  _ why are you treating this like it’s something minor??” Kyungsoo hisses as venomously as he could into the phone, hiding his face behind his hand with his slight panicked breakdown in the middle of the sauces and canned food aisle in the small town’s supermarket.

Baekhyun had finished all of the mayonnaise at lunch, and there wasn’t enough for Kyungsoo to simply magic more of it-- and Baekhyun apparently can’t live without mayonnaise. The meat that they’ve run out of is also on Kyungsoo’s list, because even if they could grow their own food around their house with magic, live animals to slaughter for meat is a different story.

And of course, the one day he’s out of the house running errands, considering both Kyungsoo’s large eyes are a pretty light brown in colour and certainly a more acceptable colour than pink, Baekhyun turns Jongin into a wolf.

“This isn’t even the worst thing I’ve ever done though,” Baekhyun speaks up over the line after a slight pause of static in Kyungsoo’s ear.

“Are you saying this isn’t as bad as when you thought it would be  _ ‘cute’  _ if you turned our entire house into a pumpkin for Halloween but conveniently forgot that it meant all our furniture would be covered in pumpkin seeds??” Kyungsoo says under his breath, running from one side of the supermarket to the other in his attempt to finish up as quickly as he could to get himself home and see what he could do in terms of damage control.

“But that required a whole lot of skill, and so does this,” Baekhyun babbles hurriedly. “So technically, I’m a pretty powerful witch if you think about it.”

Kyungsoo goes dead silent, clenching his jaw in his best efforts to not combust in his panicked anger in the middle of the pasta aisle. He could hear Baekhyun shuffling around, nervously calling out to him over the phone at Kyungsoo’s sudden silence, and he shuts his eyes for a moment to compose himself.

“I’ll be home as soon as I can,” Kyungsoo growls eventually. “You better be halfway through the spell book shelf by the time I get there.”

Baekhyun’s sweating and fidgeting when Kyungsoo materialises in the living room, still holding his bags of groceries. The street corner wasn’t the best spot to vanish himself to re-appear at home, and even if their house is only a short walk from the village, Kyungsoo considers the state of their friend enough of an emergency to use his magic.

The bags immediately drop to the burgundy rug under Kyungsoo’s feet, the witch forcing himself to not take an involuntary step back at the large black wolf immediately trotting to Kyungsoo’s side to paw at his black jeans, trying to communicate with pleading eyes and short, high-pitched whines.

Kyungsoo stares, growing increasingly frustrated at how perfectly Baekhyun transformed Kim Jongin, a previously tall, tanned boy with black hair and deep eyes that crinkled when he smiled. Though the wolf’s black fur must have come from Jongin’s naturally black hair, not even the wolf’s eyes, a honey brown colour, resemble eyes of a human quality-- and it irritates Kyungsoo, because even seasoned witches get caught up on the eye, a most complex organ, when transforming living creatures. And yet Baekhyun managed it flawlessly, transforming Jongin, the poor boy, completely into a wolf. 

With a sigh, Kyungsoo pushes a hand through the long, soft fur behind Jongin’s black ears, trying his best to give him a reassuring smile.

Jongin’s round, wolf eyes follow the books that rise into the air from the bookshelf as Kyungsoo crooks his fingers, plonking himself down on the rug to begin perusing through the worn yellow pages, fingers smoothing over the golden lettering on the spine of each thick volume, so faded that Kyungsoo isn’t even sure what each book is about until he opens it.

Jongin pads over to Baekhyun, still digging through the bookshelf with fervour, multiple books similarly hovering around him like the spell books scattered around the floor in a ring around Kyungsoo.

Kyungsoo glances up, wordlessly watching Jongin nose at the books Baekhyun places on the floor after bookmarking certain pages, the sound of pages flipping and claws pattering on the wooden flooring strangely calming to his panicked state of mind.

Though, it would be better if Jongin was still human, of course-- that’s how Kyungsoo knows him. If Baekhyun’s a lifelong friend, inseparable from the moment they opened their eyes according to their mothers, then Kyungsoo doesn’t remember his life before Jongin.

The boy came from the same hometown as the witches, the town of Ilsandong-gu that would take a few day’s travel from here on foot-- and even by magic, it would take a few terrifying minutes of being suspended in space and time before arriving, strangely enough, in the dingy bathroom of Kyungsoo’s old family home. It happens every single time they visit home, and Kyungsoo still hasn’t found out why.

Upon Kyungsoo and Baekhyun choosing to move to a different town, Jongin insisted on coming with them. Jongin, in his awkward teenage years yet towering over both his witchy friends, with skinny arms and the first signs of pubic hair, had thrown a tantrum at Kyungsoo’s explanations that “witches can’t stay with their families, Jongin”. The need for an even distribution of magical energy across the land drives the young generations of witches from their hometowns like fledglings kicked out of their nests at their coming of age. The importance of maintaining a balanced concentration of magical folk rather than have too many congregated in one area is understandable to them, but less acceptable for Jongin.

He had always been terribly fascinated by the sparks that came out of the witches’ fingers, and shouted “why does that boy have a pink eye? Is he okay?” across the street holding onto his mother’s hand the very first time they met him.

Little Jongin had been coming home from school, and after running into Kyungsoo and Baekhyun that day, he seamlessly integrates himself into their friendship-- and naturally didn’t want them to leave, so much so that he chose to follow them, moving into the town Wonmi-gu to find work.

And naturally, he likes to visit the witches in their little cottage in the middle of the woods, and brings with him stories that the villagers spin about the supposedly haunted place.

“What did you tell them?” Kyungsoo had asked, setting dinner on the little wooden table in front of the two of them.

“I told them the firewood is good in this side of the forest, they all tried to convince me to go to the one on the other side of the town,” Jongin had responded, laughing around a mouthful of Kyungsoo’s cooking.

The wooden cuckoo that lives in the ornamented wooden clock hanging above the fireplace springs out again, announcing the hour in an annoyingly high-pitched tone in Baekhyun’s voice, the way Baekhyun set it. Jongin’s all four paws leave the wooden flooring, jumping as high as he always does in his human form, the fur at the back of his neck comically standing upright.

It all serves to remind Kyungsoo that he still needs to get his friend’s human body back, and with a loud sigh he slams the book in his hands shut.

And even though it’s been hours of painstakingly sifting through spell books chapter by chapter, Kyungsoo barely succeeds.

The spell is the most difficult he’s ever had to encounter-- and that’s how it usually is. Reverse spells are somehow always designed to require more experience and trials to master, to teach the user to understand consequences of magical errors.

Magic isn’t a plaything to toy with and just use a reverse spell to eradicate any evidence of mishaps, was what Kyungsoo’s mother liked to tell him throughout his childhood, and he knows he doesn’t need to repeat it for Baekhyun to understand, if the way the other witch stands to the side with his head bowed and hands clasped is any indication.

Jongin’s sitting cross legged on the rug in front of him, dressed in some of Baekhyun’s oversized sleep shirts since he had torn his clothes when Baekhyun first transformed him, arms and legs and torso back to the way they have always been with his tanned skin and bumps of muscle adorning his slim figure.

But Kyungsoo only managed to make Jongin half-human again, black furry ears still sticking straight up out of his head, and the sides of his face looking strangely empty without his human pair of ears. The poor boy opens his mouth, and Kyungsoo nearly leans back in his shock at the large, sharp canines still in Jongin’s mouth, needing Jongin to keep his mouth slightly open so that they don’t cut into his gums until Kyungsoo figures out a way to shrink them to the size of their human counterparts.

Yet it’s the golden, honey colour of Jongin’s eyes, the colour of the eyes of his wolf, that annoy Kyungsoo the most.

It’s not fair, he doesn’t think, that Baekhyun manages to turn every little aspect and detail of Jongin into a wolf, and yet Kyungsoo makes such a mess out of reversing Baekhyun’s mistakes.

It’s not fair that Jongin still has his wolf ears twitching at the sound of birds chittering outside the window atop his head, and it’s not fair that when he turns a little to look over at Baekhyun the movement allows Kyungsoo to spy the fluffy black tail stretching out on the floor behind him.

Baekhyun clears his throat, shuffling over from where he stood at the edge of the rug when Kyungsoo tried his hand at reversing the transformation.

“Well, this is fine,” he chirps, glancing at Kyungsoo. “He can just be a werewolf then.”

“This is not fine!!” Kyungsoo and Jongin snap in synchrony, Baekhyun’s optimistic smile withering.

Kyungsoo releases a heavy breath after a moment’s pause, beckoning to Jongin to get off the floor and sit on the couch next to him.

The hours of Jongin complaining of his gums and jaws aching that it takes for Kyungsoo to shrink his large fangs is enough to convince Jongin to move from his tiny apartment in the town where he lives alone in with them both-- because Kyungsoo may be able to fix his teeth by keeping Jongin’s jaws open and keeping a firm hold on each canine with his fingers as he shrinks them one by one, but Jongin’s eyes that will shine in the dark once sun sets is not something Kyungsoo dares to try fixing.

They don’t trust Baekhyun nearly enough to try to fix it either, considering even Kyungsoo didn’t exactly perfectly manage it-- and Jongin agrees silently to it, knowing that there’s no way he could go back to that village with the wrong pair of ears on his head. 

Because a seasoned witch should be able to perform the reverse transformation charm without a hitch, which wouldn’t result in this displacement of ears mess, Kyungsoo has no way to solve it, no book to tell him how to vanish a pair of wolf ears and plant on functional human ones. 

Jongin jokes about the wild new tales the villagers would tell to their children now as Baekhyun organises his clothes for Jongin, to not go into these woods because a young man vanished and never re-emerged from the place.

Kyungsoo flashes him a tight-lipped smile in return, unable to bring himself to laugh along, not with how this ruined the chances of Jongin living and working and marrying like a human should, and living out the course of his life the way it was planned. He stands from the couch, ignoring the questioning whine that comes from Jongin as he strides past to his own room.

 

Baekhyun jumps the slightest, the shirt he’s got hovering in the air next to him shaking a little as he whips around at the sound of his bedroom door closing with a soft click.

He stares wordlessly as Jongin shuffles closer, sitting on the edge of Baekhyun’s bed, honey-like round eyes watching in his curiosity as the levitating shirt stretches a little larger. His eyes follow the shirt when Baekhyun tosses it onto the growing pile on the bed of enlarged clothes with a flick of his elegantly thin fingers.

“I think that’s all I need, hyung,” Jongin murmurs quietly, eyes navigating back to the witch. 

Baekhyun hums, noticing how the sound makes the tip of Jongin’s black ear flick forwards to catch it, crooking his finger to bring a floating sweater out of his closet.

“I don’t think so,” is what he says when he eventually speaks up, turning to look at Jongin and Jongin’s blinking eyes with a small sigh. “I don’t know how to make up for… essentially ruining your life,” he laughs dryly. “Accommodating you is the best I can do, so don’t stop me from doing all I can.”

With an embarrassed chuckle, he moves to dig through his closet again in a poor attempt to hide his face from Jongin’s penetrating stares. Somehow, perhaps because of the stares and Jongin’s pretty eyes that don’t leave his own, Baekhyun finds the visible distinction between the light-hearted joking to hide his uncertainty back there in the living room and the baring of his thoughts to the wolf-boy, a distinction that has never been made so clear before.

“Hyung,” Jongin’s voice is quiet, and his eyes are still on Baekhyun, and it sends a strange mixture of warmth paired with shivers through his body. “It’s alright. I don’t mind, I want to live here with you.”

“It’s not how it was meant to be,” Baekhyun groans into his palms, long fingers covering his eyes. “Only magic would tamper the way your life was written out in the stars, which is exactly what I did--”

Jongin laughs, loud and clear, and watches how Baekhyun whips his head around to quirk a questioning brow at him with satisfaction.

“You know very well I’ve never believed in the ‘life-lines in the patterns of the stars’ deal. I couldn’t care less about how my life was meant to be, but I do like you, and I like Kyungsoo hyung, and I like this house.” he quirks his lips at Baekhyun, standing from his spot on the bed. “I’m not going anywhere.”

It takes Baekhyun a moment, but when he looks up from where his eyes had been resting at Jongin’s chest to Jongin’s face, he returns the small smile, a touch of his usual mischievousness on his lips. “Time to change that, if you’re going to be living with two witches,” he giggles quietly at how Jongin rolls his eyes.

His grin turns softer at the corners of his eyes when Jongin nods obediently, promising vaguely to at least attempt to understand the customs the witches live by. 

“I’m sorry,” he mutters in the silence that follows. “I’m still sorry.”

He doesn’t miss the way Jongin’s beautiful canine eyes jump from one of Baekhyun’s facial features to another, roaming his face.

“What are you saying sorry for?” the boy eventually murmurs. “When was the last time you apologised for something you did? Stop saying it, it doesn’t suit you.”

The witch raises a fist against the hard muscles of Jongin’s chest and shoulders, and Jongin playfully winces in response, eyes trained to catch even the slightest lightening of Baekhyun’s expression.

The witch beckons a shirt from the pile on the bed over with a finger, grabbing it mid air and holding it out to Jongin.

“Is that the right size?” Jongin nods, ears flapping on top of his head with his movement, drawing little chuckles out of Baekhyun as he watches Jongin excitedly sort through all his new clothes, pulling on certain garments and turning to Baekhyun with his wide smiles asking for his approval.

Naturally, Kyungsoo had ordered Baekhyun to share his room with Jongin over dinner as the plates fly over to the table.

“You made the mess, you can deal with it,” he snapped, and Baekhyun and Jongin exchange a look before shrugging and chorusing their agreement.

What Baekhyun didn’t expect was how hard it would be to remember that Jongin is still half-wolf.

Jongin yelps, and Baekhyun immediately jumps off the bed, only belatedly realising he had rested his weight on Jongin’s tail, which was stretched out and hidden under the blankets when he tried to climb into bed. Jongin’s laughing, cradling his tail as Baekhyun spews apologies, crawling over on the bed to stroke the black fur.

Even when he’s comfortably tucked in, snuggling close to Jongin for warmth as they always have done with every sleepover since they were little, he forgets Jongin’s ears until he closes his eyes to sleep and feels the furry tips against his skin with Jongin tucking himself under Baekhyun’s chin.

The witch tries his best to shift away from Jongin and his flicking ears in the subtlest way without alerting Jongin, but the boy raises his head questioningly anyway.

“Your ears,” Baekhyun laughs awkwardly in the silent darkness of the room. “They were tickling my nose.”

Jongin breathes out a chuckle against Baekhyun’s shoulder, shuffling away. He moves to lay his tail on Baekhyun’s knee under the covers, and certainly did not expect the witch to jump in shock at the feeling of fur against his bare skin.

“Hyung,” Jongin chokes out between his soundless laughs, clutching at his stomach from the horror on Baekhyun’s face that he could make out in the dark. “That was my tail!”

“Merlin,” Baekhyun mutters, releasing a huge breath of relief. “Don’t do that,” he huffs, moving one arm in the direction of Jongin’s cackles. “You’re going to scare the witch out of me, I genuinely thought that was a fucking rat! You know how much I hate rats!”

Jongin catches Baekhyun’s flailing limb neatly despite his chuckling, and Baekhyun peers at him in the gloom. He never noticed, not with Jongin previously closing his eyes to sleep and then scrunching up his eyes with the intensity of his laughter, but when he opens them a little wider Baekhyun takes note of the way his light brown irises shine just the slightest.

It’s fascinating, the colour is too gorgeous to be feared. And paired with the sound of Jongin’s chuckles slowly dying down, Baekhyun finds that he likes the wolf eyes, likes the richness of the colour and likes the way they glow in the dark. Baekhyun finds that perhaps he’s glad Kyungsoo never managed to perfectly execute the reverse spell, no matter how selfish that seems.

  
  
  


Baekhyun laughs when a bowl hovers over, nearly catching Jongin on the head before Jongin immediately moves out of its path as it sits itself on the tabletop. Kyungsoo shuffles over not long after, spooning soup into each of their bowls from his pot, and both of them exclaim their praises at the smells of the food.

Living with an extra person in the house doesn’t seem much different.

Jongin always used to drop in to visit, even before they left Ilsan, and stayed over in this same cottage in Baekhyun’s bedroom too many times to count-- and though Baekhyun lives with Kyungsoo and is never lonely in that aspect, living and sharing a room with Jongin drives away the strange disappointment that would always settle like bile at the base of his stomach every time Jongin leaves to go back to his own home.

Plus, it means he has someone when Kyungsoo pushes him away in favour of reading or cooking. He gravitates towards Jongin instead, resting his head on Jongin's shoulder or knee, reaching up to scratch behind a fluffy black ear to turn Jongin to putty beneath his fingers. It works nearly like magic every time, redirecting Jongin's attention to him immediately, and Baekhyun would grin at him, demanding to be entertained.

The degree to how natural the addition of Jongin to the household perhaps should have scared them both, but Jongin is as familiar as they are to each other, as familiar and natural in their home as family-- adjustments to food Kyungsoo has to make to accommodate an extra mouth aren’t significant because of it. Though Kyungsoo isn’t sure whether it’s his imagination that Jongin’s eating more than he used to, which was already a considerable amount, or if it’s really from being half wolf.

 

Baekhyun smiles and nods, knowing that even though their bedroom is dimmed already, Jongin's enhanced nocturnal vision means he'd see him even in the dark. He shifts, turning his head on his pillow to let his eyes fix on Jongin's shining pair, which he decided he admires a long while ago.

He's heard of stories hunters tell of the glinting amber eyes of wolves between the trees after the sun sets-- and yet Baekhyun delights in the way Jongin's pretty ones are trained on him. He likes how they're like two little light beams, like stars sparking up the darkest hours of the night-- at least, the hour they stay up talking until.

“Have you tried shifting yet?” Baekhyun whispers against his pillow, hearing Jongin hum thoughtfully.

“I didn't think I could, I thought I'm just a human with small faults.”

Baekhyun pauses running a hand through his hair and the shorter hair of his fringe that he pushes out of his face.

“Witches don't study werewolves enough,” he says eventually. “Perhaps you can, I think you can, but neither Kyungsoo or I can say for sure.” he turns, feeling his black hair fan out like a dark halo around his head on his pillow, to look over at Jongin. “Maybe you can give it a go.”

 

“Do you want to try again?”

Jongin whines, stomping his foot as though he was still 3 years old and Baekhyun still 5 years old and refusing to share candy with him. “I don’t know how to do it, hyung!”

Baekhyun shares a hopeless look with Kyungsoo, sitting balanced on the railing that leads out to the back yard, watching with a frown on his brows and pout on his lips.

Kyungsoo catches his eye and shrugs. Afterall, it’s not like they’re wolves-- they only have books on how to transform things using magic, and not how to transform yourself. Yet Jongin’s been standing shirtless in the middle of the overgrown garden for at least an hour by now, getting increasingly frustrated at the stubbornness of his own body.

“It's alright, Jongin,” Baekhyun says immediately, walking over to the boy and wrapping his hands around Jongin's forearm to drag him into the shade closer to the house. “Maybe I was wrong, maybe you aren't meant to be able to shift.”

Jongin lets out another small whine, pout hanging on his bottom lip.

“But this doesn't feel right either,” he says more quietly. “This feels like I'm awkwardly stuck between being human, but not exactly human-- and being a wolf but not much of a wolf.”

Baekhyun bites his bottom lip, ushering Jongin out of the sun and indoors, muttering reassurances and promises of a glass of juice instead.

  
  
  
  


Call him persistent, or stubborn, perhaps, but Baekhyun gives it more thought than it requires.

Jongin's words are what keeps him up at night even after he hears the loud breathing on the other side of the bed even out, because Jongin's right. He's already been robbed of his right to live as a normal human, and yet he's not enough wolf despite his physical wolverine features, and it's nagging at Baekhyun-- the need to fix, the need to finish what he started, is a lasting knocking on the inside of his brain, forcing him to sit himself down at the dining table early on the morning.

Kyungsoo doesn't bother turning around, acknowledging Baekhyun's presence with a glass of water that floats it's way to him.

“You're up early,” he speaks up after a moment, still bent over the stove, where Baekhyun could already smell the cooking of eggs over the crackling warmth of the green flames that Kyungsoo sits the pan on.

Baekhyun hums. “I think Jongin needs wolfy friends. Aren’t there other werewolves in these woods? Maybe then he’ll learn how to switch between his forms, if someone teaches him. We should take him to meet up with them.”

Kyungsoo turns now, shooting Baekhyun an incredulous look as he continues stirring the scrambled eggs.

“Are you mad? What do you think this is, a school reunion?”

Baekhyun pouts, watching Kyungsoo spoon out the eggs and snap his fingers, the green flames dying out instantaneously. “What? It’ll be fun, he needs wolfy friends!”

“He doesn’t need wolf friends, he’s not an actual wolf,” Kyungsoo snaps, and with another click of his fingers, the eggs in the plate duplicate themselves, and he hurriedly tries to catch the pieces on the edges of the dish from toppling out.

“He is now,” Baekhyun argues, even as Kyungsoo brings him breakfast. “He can’t stay wedged halfway between wolf and human forever, he should learn how to shift.”

“And who’s fault is that??”

Baekhyun opens his mouth before seemingly thinking better of it, and zipping it tight shut, opting to shovel the food in his mouth.

Even when Jongin joins them, muttering a sleepy observation of how early Baekhyun seems to have woken today, he only turns to Jongin and silently scratches him behind the ears as he eats.

 

“I think Jongin needs wolfy friends,” Baekhyun chirps up again in the evening at dinner.

The wolf-boy had simply watched on in mild surprise as Baekhyun dug through the bookshelf all morning after breakfast, giving Kyungsoo the most puzzled expression when Kyungsoo walked into the living room to make lunch. 

“What's he doing?” Kyungsoo had nodded in Baekhyun's direction, Jongin only shrugging with his bright eyes stretched wide.

“He's been doing that all morning.”

Baekhyun only smiled, announcing he's done eating, then headed straight for his books again after lunch, leaving Jongin to pout and lay on the carpet, napping on one of the thick volumes open on the floor.

“Werewolves,” Baekhyun had read aloud, excitedly flipping to the chapter. “How to treat werewolf bite-- how to turn one into a werewolf…”

He then sighed, shutting the book before noticing Jongin's sprawled out form on the floor next to him. 

With a quiet chuckle he moved to drape a shawl, the ugly purple one Kyungsoo's aunt gave them for Christmas, over him for resuming his hunt.

“Baekhyun,” Kyungsoo sighs, motioning for Jongin to keep eating his dinner, as he raised his head in stunned silence when Baekhyun blurted out his declaration. “You never know. Maybe because this was a magical mistake, there's no way around it.”

Baekhyun frowns, but Kyungsoo doesn't wait around for him to argue.

“Jongin was essentially made to be like this with magic, and the nature of werewolves would then be unrelated to the error we made in the magical process.”

Kyungsoo stands, clearing his plates with a lazy wave of his hand.

“What do you think, Jonginnie?” Baekhyun leans forward, eyes bright and focused on Jongin, taking the boy aback.

“I…” he stammers slightly. “I guess it would be alright? No harm done, right?”

Baekhyun's lips stretch into a beaming, beautifully bright smile, curling the edges of his eyes into crescents and showing off all his pearly teeth in his undisguised glee.

“See?” he exclaims, turning around in his chair to stick his tongue out at Kyungsoo, who has turned to face them from his position near the sink in the furthest corner of the little tiled kitchen. “Jongin agrees!”

The other witch sighs, giving Baekhyun no more than an eye roll as he turns to point at the dishes, supervising the plates as they scour themselves.

  
  


Baekhyun ignores Kyungsoo's grumbling from behind them, holding tight onto Jongin's forearm incase he tripped on the mess of roots that run across the forest floor.

The leaf litter is dark, damp with moisture but also covered in the shadows of the trees stretching up over their heads, blocking out what little sunlight that would have streamed through the canopy to the ground at this time of day.

Baekhyun insisted on waiting until evening to venture into the side of the woods the villagers are oh-so-afraid of. He and Kyungsoo had explored the area before, though never this late in the day, and he recognises the work of werewolves-- pale lines and markings clawed into the thick bark on the tree trunks, tramped grass in clearings, flattened by multiple huge bodies lying in the sunny patches during the day. The occasional stench of rotting flesh still messily attached to carcasses-- and the silence of the forest.

The long hairs on the back of Baekhyun's neck stand straight up, the red ends of his black hair spiking in his alarm, fingers tightening around Jongin's arm.

He isn't sure why he hasn't noticed until this point, but the birds aren't singing-- and he's pretty certain it isn't because of Jongin's presence.

“Kyungsoo,” Baekhyun starts. “I don't think we're going to be able to casually run into any of them just be strolling around, maybe we should go home and try another d--”

Baekhyun breaks off upon twisting his head around to look at Kyungsoo, and finding him with his eyes locked in an unbroken gaze into the trees.

“Kyungsoo?” Baekhyun calls, nearly jumping out of his skin when he finally sees it-- two gleaming green orbs hidden in the foliage, shining in the shadows.

Baekhyun stumbles, fervently tugging on Jongin's arm, watching in silence as the eyes blink and shift.

Then there's a sudden rustling, and Baekhyun's eyes drop to the ground, watching a huge white paw step out of the shadows casted by the bushes surrounding them. 

Then a dark snout is daintily nosing out of the leaves, green eyes blinking slowly at the three frozen boys.

Baekhyun takes an involuntary step back, watching the absolutely huge wolf slide slowly out of its cover, revealing what seems to miles of glossy grey fur along its flank, white paws gently stirring up the leaves underfoot.

The same green eyes shift from Baekhyun to Kyungsoo without glancing back, barely sparing Jongin a glance before the wolf turns towards Kyungsoo. 

Jongin’s eyes are wide, staring on confusedly at the huge, lone wolf sniffing Kyungsoo up, having walked right past Jongin in favour of approaching the shorter witch.

“So Kyungsoo’s going to get a wolfy friend then?” Baekhyun says under his breath, watching how the wolf’s pricked ears flicker momentarily in his direction.

“Can you stop saying that? It’s not an actual word, Baekhyun,” Kyungsoo snaps back, standing stock-still as the black nose of the beast twitches curiously, still leaning forward to stick its snout up against Kyungsoo.

“It’s cute, and why are you arguing with me over a word when there’s literally a massive wolf trying to get your attention?” Baekhyun says quickly, Jongin beside him muttering something about maybe Kyungsoo still smelling like the chicken they had for dinner. “I feel like you should be a whole lot more concerned about that.”

As though only just considering the possibility that the wolf could be considering how suitable Kyungsoo would be as  _ his  _ dinner, and could open its jaws to take a chunk out of Kyungsoo's leg if it wanted to, Kyungsoo suddenly stiffens, casting Baekhyun a look. Even though werewolves do tend to be bigger in size than normal wolves, there’s no saying that this wolf is necessarily half-human, Kyungsoo beginning to sweat at the thought that it would be hopeless negotiating with a real wolf.

Baekhyun immediately shakes his head-- though the two of them managed to both master the art of teleportation, Jongin wouldn’t be able to follow them into a vacuum of time and space to re-materialise in the living room of their house, and would be left in the forest on his own with this giant grey wolf. And Jongin is an absolutely useless werewolf who wouldn’t be able to protect himself let alone the witches as well.

It takes the wolf taking a small step backwards, green eyes still fixed curiously on Kyungsoo, for Baekhyun to grab Jongin by the wrist and dash past the wolf, Kyungsoo immediately following them. Though they crash into each other in their shared haste to scramble in the front door of the cottage, Baekhyun collapsing against the wooden walls as Kyungsoo slides the lock in place, the rustling in the bushes that frame the clearing the cottage sits in goes unnoticed-- a black nose is raised from where it was previously hovering over the ground, grey ears pricked at the sounds coming from inside the slightly overgrown house.

The sleek-furred body slides seamlessly back into the shadows of the undergrowth, glimmering green eyes sweeping over the vines running along the pretty sandstone exterior walls, committing the arrangements of quaint potted plants on the wooden steps that lead to the front door to memory.

  
  
  
  


Kyungsoo swings the door open, flicking the locked latch open from the night before, frowning in complete confusion.

The three polite, resounding knocks through the wooden door had been strangely gentle, yet strong, loud enough for him to pick up on it from the kitchen on the other side of the living room, hurriedly extinguishing his fire to wipe his hands on his disgustingly pink and floral patterned apron.

Only as Kyungsoo was hurrying towards the door did the realisation occur to him that they aren’t expecting any visitors, certainly not any of the towns people. The frown materialised on his brow-- perhaps some of Jongin’s previous friends decided to come look for him after all?

“Uh, who are you?”

Kyungsoo’s eyes rake up and down the figure standing with bare feet on the door mat that Baekhyun magically coloured a fluorescent pink-- his eyes take in the stranger, standing nearly completely bare in front of his front door, blinking stupidly at the wide expanses of skin over the man’s broad shoulders, yet taut and toned over the stomach. What seems like miles and miles of thin limbs distract Kyungsoo from the man’s face, until he speaks in a low voice that catches the witch entirely off guard.

“We met before!”

The witch’s eyes snap up from the man’s thin frame, up to his face, brows furrowing further. 

The pointed chin and chiseled cheekbones and jawline, with strong eyebrows that frame thin eyes tell Kyungsoo that no, he’s most definitely never met this person before-- he’d remember meeting such a handsome face for sure.

At Kyungsoo’s stunned silence, a pink bottom lip is jutted out, and Kyungsoo tilts his face to one side, continually scrutinising him in hopes that a recollection of this person would suddenly come to him.

Perhaps he’s a distant nephew of Baekhyun’s, or one of Kyungsoo’s fifteen cousins on his father’s side-- but that doesn’t explain why he’s only dressed in a rather small-looking tattered pair of shorts on his hips and nothing else.

“I… don’t think we have,” Kyungsoo mumbles, cocking an eyebrow, the stranger rolling his eyes in retaliation, flicking strands of pale silver hair out of his eyes.

“It was just yesterday, how did you forget so soon?”

He pauses and leans down, sharp gaze fixed resolutely on Kyungsoo’s face, waiting for Kyungsoo to notice the glimmer of forest green in his dark irises.

“Wait,” Kyungsoo blinks rapidly, eyes immediately widening as the gears in his head turn to let the pieces click together to give him a coherent conclusion. “Wait, are you--”

The man simply strolls past the threshold, broad shoulders sliding past Kyungsoo’s, seemingly satisfied with Kyungsoo’s revelation.

The witch hurriedly closes the front door behind him with an accidental bang, with the flicking of his hand in the air too strong in his momentary shock, jaw hung open as he stares after the man. “Wait, you--?”

The man turns in the middle of Kyungsoo’s own corridor, grey hair swishing with the movement, to flash a tight-lipped grin over his shoulder at Kyungsoo, affirmatory nod somehow leaving Kyungsoo even more at a loss for what to do than before.

He nearly misses Baekhyun yawning, crossing into an adjacent corridor with the red ends of his hair sticking up in a mess of spikes, before doing a double-take and pausing upon noticing the nearly-naked man standing in their house.

“Oh, hello?” he pipes up, the head of pale grey hair whipping around towards the other witch, who glances to Kyungsoo, then back at the man, eyebrows raised and the slightest smile pulling up his lips. “You didn’t tell me you had someone over, Soo?”

Kyungsoo stands with his mouth opened ready to protest, and yet unable to find words to explain the strange situation he managed to get himself in. A head of black hair pops up from behind Baekhyun, Jongin’s sleepily squinted eyes instantly widening once catching sight of the stranger, cowering in an attempt to hide himself behind Baekhyun’s shoulders.

“What’s wrong, Jonginnie?” Baekhyun twists his neck back to blink confusedly at him. “Why’re you doing that?”

“He’s that wolf from yesterday,” Jongin whispers, eyes trained on the man, as though he isn’t standing half a broom’s length away and could most definitely hear their conversation.

“Oh,” Baekhyun exclaims while Kyungsoo continues staring flabbergasted at Jongin and his seemingly hidden wolf-ish abilities, remaining undisturbed with his tone too chirpy and bright for the morning. “Damn, you make a hot person too.”

Kyungsoo turns incredulous eyes on the other witch, as though it wasn’t Baekhyun who ran the fastest from the wolf the night before, while Jongin sneaks a hand around Baekhyun’s waist to pinch his side hard.

“Hyung!”

Baekhyun yelps, before turning to the werewolf, gesturing a welcome into the house, motioning for him to come in as an invitation to sit him around the dining table. Kyungsoo stops short from sitting in his usual seat, heading to the kitchen to boil water with the kettle in his hands for tea instead.

“So you’re a werewolf?” Kyungsoo hears Baekhyun say, knowing the witch is leaning forward in his seat without needing to turn around to look. “What’s your name?”

When the man speaks, the low, velvety sound is what comes out from his throat yet again, reminding Kyungsoo of the few words they had exchanged at the door, how the werewolf seems to have very few words to say to begin with.

“Oh Sehun.” Kyungsoo’s ears drink in the strength in his contradicting quiet voice, admiring the smooth way it sounds, still able to carry over the growing whistling of the kettle in his hands. “Sorry for scaring you yesterday.”

Baekhyun laughs good-naturedly, all polite denials and apologies for their hasty escape that don’t sound too completely genuine to Kyungsoo’s ears.

“I’m Baekhyun, Kim Jongin,” Baekhyun’s saying by the time Kyungsoo’s poured the tea into dainty little cups, carefully letting themselves settle in front of each person before he takes a seat himself next to Baekhyun and opposite Jongin. “And this is Kyungsoo.”

Sehun sits straight in the chair, Kyungsoo not missing his eyes widening in interest, watching the werewolf over the rim of his cup. “Kyungsoo?”

“Yes, Doh Kyungsoo,” Baekhyun grins, turning to look at Kyungsoo sipping quietly on his tea next to him as though he knows something the other witch doesn’t. “He’s great, he’s single too, I think you’ll like him.”

Kyungsoo raises a hand, beckoning a over a small mug placemat from the coffee table on the other side of the room to him, delighting in the squeals Baekhyun lets out as he tries to duck the flying object.

He leans back in the wooden chair, eyes returning to watching Sehun the werewolf struggling to lift the small, dainty tea cup to his mouth with his large hands. “Jongin’s a werewolf, like you,” he starts, and Sehun immediately places the cup back down in favour of focusing his attention on Kyungsoo. “And if you couldn’t already tell, Baekhyun and I are witches.”

“You smelt like one,” Sehun quietly adds, garnering the attention of the table in their collective surprise at him voluntarily speaking.

Kyungsoo blinks, tilting his head. “...So what do witches smell like?”

Sehun leans back in his chair, eyes remaining fixed on Kyungsoo. “Do you know what wolves smell like?”

Kyungsoo glances up at Jongin sitting opposite him, who returns his gaze with a bewildered look of his own. “No?” he mutters, discomfort crawling under every inch of his skin at the quiet that settled over the table with Baekhyun only silently watching their exchange and both their voices low and soft. 

“Then how am I supposed to know what witches smell like?” Sehun shoots back. “It’s a scent I can’t explain.”

Kyungsoo feels his tongue weigh a tonne in his mouth, wordlessly bringing his teacup to his lips with a nod, ignoring Baekhyun’s cackles at Sehun’s response. 

“I like this kid,” the other witch is saying, voice tainted with his smile. “Can we keep him?”

“He’s a werewolf, Baekhyun,” Kyungsoo snaps, refusing to make eye contact with Sehun despite feeling his stares drilling into him enough to burn multiple holes through his skin. 

“We wanted a wolfy friend for Jongin, this is perfect,” Baekhyun exclaims, but turns to Sehun with a cordial smile the next moment. “Feel free to come by anytime and have a meal or hang out with us, Sehun, got it?”

Kyungsoo chances a glance over the shield of his cup at the apparent new member of the family as decided by Baekhyun, nearly startling out of his black sweater to catch Sehun nodding at Baekhyun with a small smile before his eyes flit back to Kyungsoo.

“Leave it,” Kyungsoo mutters under his breath when Baekhyun raises a hand to help move the teacups to the kitchen once their cups are drained. 

He waves the other witch over, pulling him into the kitchen together.

“Stop inviting Sehun over, don’t you think it’s weird? He’s a werewolf, Baekhyun.”

Baekhyun simply scoffs at him. “What’s got your panties in a twist? There’s nothing wrong with him.”

“He literally keeps staring at me, are you sure about that?”

Baekhyun shrugs noncommittally. “Maybe you’re just a particularly good-smelling witch.”

“What?”

Instead of answering, Baekhyun skips out of the kitchen, calling loudly to Jongin, warmly inviting Sehun to stay for lunch when Sehun follows Jongin to Baekhyun’s side.

Kyungsoo turns away to face the sink, thoughtfully gnawing on his bottom lip as he watches the tea cups clean. 

  
  
  
  
  


Kyungsoo’s eyes follow the path the spoon takes through the air, blinking as Sehun seemingly endlessly continues to shovel rice in his mouth. He doesn’t have the heart to remind the werewolf that you don’t hold the metal spoon like a dagger you’re about to use as a weapon, only watching silently as the boy inhales his dinner while Kyungsoo’s own bowl remains nearly untouched.

“Have you been starving yourself?” Baekhyun speaks up, and Kyungsoo glances at the other witch sitting beside him to find him staring at the werewolf in a similar fashion. “Is that how you manage to be so skinny?” he adds, flicking his index finger to fly a napkin over to Jongin sitting diagonally opposite him.

With a shy smile, the black ears atop his head flopping forward the slightest, Jongin hurriedly wipes all the rice grains and sauce he managed to have drizzled all over his cheek and chin. Kyungsoo grins, taking a bite of his own share, mentally cooing over the younger boy, having not changed a single bit since they had been children. And just like always, Baekhyun’s always the one to know to pass him a tissue.

Only when Sehun speaks up does Kyungsoo advert his eyes to him, raising his eyebrows.

“I like human food,” he murmurs, leaning back in his chair with his spoon neatly placed back in the center of the bowl, completely empty, and Kyungsoo’s eyes widen. The head of grey hair lowers in apparent embarrassment, glancing up through his pale eyelashes at Kyungsoo. “Am I allowed seconds?”

“Uh,” Kyungsoo blinks intelligently, gesturing over to the kitchen. “I think there’s a little bit of rice and stew left in the pan if you want.”

He hadn’t even finished his sentence when Sehun’s up and out of his seat, striding over with his bowl to the stove that the pan still sits on-- then Kyungsoo’s ears are picking up a little hum in pleasure before Sehun returns to his chair, happily digging into another full bowl of the beef stew and rice, ignoring the bark of laughter from Baekhyun’s direction.

“Kyungsoo’s cooking tends to have that effect on people,” the other witch says fondly, and Sehun raises his eyes in an unwavering gaze towards Kyungsoo.

“What magic is this?”

At this, Baekhyun and Kyungsoo both burst out laughing, the latter hiding it behind a hand while Baekhyun lets his guffaws ring out in the living room.

“Kyungsoo hyung doesn’t use magic to cook,” Jongin supplies helpfully whilst Kyungsoo fans himself. “Baekhyun hyung complains it doesn’t taste as good as literally handmade food.”

“There’s a difference!” Baekhyun insists, Sehun glancing confusedly between the other wolf and Kyungsoo.

“What is ‘hyung’?”

“A respectful honourific used by males for older males,” Jongin pipes up, and for a quiet moment, Kyungsoo mistakes Sehun’s contemplative face as a precursor to using the term in addressing Kyungsoo or Baekhyun too.

But Sehun only nods, turning back to his food with another hum, leaving Kyungsoo to wonder about Sehun and the age of the wolf-- something he doesn’t seem too eager to reveal to the bunch of them anytime too soon.

 

The long shadows of the trees surrounding the house have stretched far higher than the red brick roof, Kyungsoo squinting as he rummages about on the ground in the back yard.

Only when the sun was already setting did he remember to pick the herbs that he would be needing for dinner, running out of the house in his socks and bending down towards the garden bed. The plants he nurtures with his magic grow exceptionally well-- perhaps too much so. They grow so much that they begin to intersect despite being planted a little away from each other, Kyungsoo muttering swears under his breath as he tries to untangle the coriander and the parsley stems, carefully breaking off stems that have gotten too long. It means bending over to reach, but it's his only option if Kyungsoo wants to avoid using magic incase it collides with his growth spells. 

Or worse, the protective spells around the property. 

It's the only thing keeping out the myriad of forest animals that would otherwise thank Kyungsoo for the number of juicy leaves and stems in the garden. The magical shield extends around the house until the front door, where it ends, because of Baekhyun insisting on welcoming visitors. 

Kyungsoo straightens, wandering over to the overgrown patch of lavender, thinking about stringing them around the house. It's only when he glances up again, ready to head back into the house, that he actually notices the huge grey wolf.

With a loud yell, Kyungsoo jumps a foot into the air, nearly slipping on the carpet of leaves underfoot in his undisguised surprise-- and yet he never released his hand on his herbs, the bunch staying safe in his hands.

The glowing green orbs in the gloom that surrounds the house at dusk stare straight at him, penetrating and inquisitive yet somehow unsure all at once, and it takes Kyungsoo another moment to actually recognise those eyes, the dappled, thick grey pelt, the lean, well-muscled build of the wolf.

And when he does, Kyungsoo groans, justifying his response with the fact that he still isn’t quite familiar with Sehun’s wolf form considering he had only met Sehun’s wolf once before.

“What are you doing?” he raises his voice, nodding at the wolf. “How long have you been standing there?”

All of a sudden, the wolf’s entire body contorts, and Kyungsoo’s eyes widen, watching the snout shorten into a sculpted nose, forearms lengthening. His fur shrinks back into the man’s skin, the wolf standing on his hind legs which straighten. A pair of human ears appear on the sides of the much more familiar handsome face, the canine pair of ears shrinking and becoming no more than Sehun’s usual grey hair, giving one last twitch before Kyungsoo fully loses sight of them in the mess of hair sticking in all directions. The man blinks, the brightness of his green eyes not quite fading, still shining with how the trees around them block what’s left of the light at twilight.

It’s when Kyungsoo catches sight of Sehun’s long, scruffy tail shrinking into the crack of his incredibly well-shaped human ass that he realises-- Sehun is very much stark naked, standing at the edge of the forest, still watching Kyungsoo rummage around in his garden.

“I’m seeing what you’re doing with the plan--” Sehun breaks off with a surprised yelp, scrambling to catch the random cloth Kyungsoo magicked out of his pocket and flung at him. In Kyungsoo’s haste, it’s a disgusting bright orange in colour and strangely irregularly shaped, as though a bear chewed on the edges of the cloth, but it’s enough to cover Sehun’s bare crotch. 

“Hold that there,” Kyungsoo snaps. “We aren’t werewolves, walking around stark naked is not appreciated in this household.”

Noticing Sehun’s eyes glancing around, as though to silently argue that they aren’t exactly in the household, Kyungsoo turns away, tucking his herbs carefully away.

“On this property,” he sighs. “We do not appreciate walking around stark naked, werewolf or not.”

He starts towards the back door of the house, glancing over his shoulder.

“You werewolves have no manners. First you show up and scare the witch out of me, then you shift and end up naked right infront of me.” he rolls his eyes. “Is this how you treat the people who invite you in for dinner?”

Immediately Sehun perks up, hurriedly running up to Kyungsoo with a renewed gleam in his eyes at the mention of dinner with the rest of them yet again-- and Kyungsoo fights the amused grin at the way Sehun takes particular care to keep the cloth wrapped around his hips.

  
  
  
  


Kyungsoo opens the door to a smile on Sehun’s face this time, once again brushing past Kyungsoo at the door, slipping into the house, Kyungsoo admittedly confusedly following him into his own home. The door clicks shut on it own behind them, and Kyungsoo watches as Sehun heads straight for the kitchen, sitting himself daintily down at the table and looking up expectantly at the witch.

“You’re here for breakfast?” Kyungsoo raises an eyebrow, laughing in his disbelief when Sehun nods. “My house isn’t a restaurant Sehun, at least pay me if you want to eat here.”

The werewolf cocks his head to one side, blinking slowly up at Kyungsoo.

“What’s a restaurant?”

Kyungsoo stops short before realising that the wolf had lived wild in the woods, no wonder he decided to keep coming to the cottage to eat, considering he wouldn’t need to go look for his own food and hunt it down.

He releases a breath, motioning towards the fridge and setting four eggs down on the kitchen counter as carefully as he could, beginning to walk away from the dining table and towards the kitchen.

“This is because you’re too lazy to hunt or something, isn’t it?” he says instead, letting the frying pan float out of the cupboard and onto the stove, which lights up with green with a snap of Kyungsoo’s fingers.

“I like human food better.” Sehun’s response is a little louder than his usual speaking volume, perhaps afraid Kyungsoo wouldn’t be able to hear him, and the witch rolls his eyes at the never changing words.

He turns around to watch as Sehun’s curved eyes instantly light up once he catches sight of the plate of eggs floating over to him, reaching out to grab the lone fork in the air along with the plate and quite literally wolfing it down.

Sehun stops to raise his head, blinking at Kyungsoo across the room.

“Aren’t you going to have some?”

Kyungsoo huffs out a small laugh, turning back towards the stove. “That’s for you.”

There’s a pause before he hears the werewolf eating as the background music to his cooking, spooning out the share of eggs and bacon for Baekhyun and Jongin in a separate plate for Baekhyun to warm with his hands whenever they wake up. He sends Sehun’s portion of bacon into the air to him, and grins to himself upon hearing the high-pitched noise of delight the wolf makes through his nose upon receiving the new plate.

Kyungsoo’s smile only grows with Sehun’s pleased hums, returning to his seat at the dining table with a glass of water to Sehun lifting his head and shooting Kyungsoo a wide-eyed look.

“This is so good,” he mumbles through a mouthful, Kyungsoo only chuckling and pointing at his cup and watches it seemingly split in half on the tabletop as it forms an identical copy of itself before Kyungsoo sends the new, second glass of water over to Sehun.

The werewolf’s thin eyes, eyes that shine with the slightest hint of green under the morning light washing into the house from the large living room windows, widen, flickering between Kyungsoo and the water, blinking rapidly as he swallows.

“You can do that too?”

Kyungsoo only laughs again. “I should hope I can, it’s rather simple magic we had to learn since we were kids. I think even Baekhyun knows how to duplicate something.”

The boy is quiet, reaching for the glass and examining it in his large hands before raising it to his lips and looking adorably surprised at the liquid that is indeed pure water.

“When I was younger and learning this charm for the first time,” Kyungsoo starts out of nowhere, watching how every one of Sehun’s expressions sit transparently on his face, his pleasant surprise, his curiosity, his wonder, his awe. “I managed to do it properly for the first time, the glass came out perfectly rather than as a warped version of the original glass.”

Sehun watches him as he speaks, sipping on his water, blinking eyes focused in that same slightly unnerving way on Kyungsoo yet again.

“So I was excited, for once the glass isn’t shaped so wrongly that water leaked from it-- but even when I managed to perfectly copy the glass, the water somehow wasn’t water, but was mawin instead.” Kyungsoo chuckles, taking a drink from his own cup. “I happily gulped it down but spat it out it was so bitter.”

When he looks up at Sehun again, his thin eyebrows are furrowed, lowering his glass from his face. “What was it again?”

“Mawin, magic wine?” Kyungsoo pauses, gauging Sehun’s reaction from his unchanged expression. “Wine for magical folk? It’s like… It’s like a potion,” he tries instead, this time Sehun nodding in sudden understanding. “Made of holly leaves and snake saliva after the poison’s been extracted with magic. And it’s not good to drink too much of it.”

Sehun leans back, with his glass empty and plate perfectly polished, regarding Kyungsoo with a lazy, satisfied look in his eyes. “Why would anyone drink it if it’s bitter and terrible?”

“It’s refreshing, I suppose,” Kyungsoo shrugs before fixing Sehun with a raised brow and a slight tilt on his lips. “You should try it for yourself, if you’re so curious.”

“No thanks,” Sehun hurriedly stands from his seat, Kyungsoo laughing at the horror all over his face. “I’m not keen on drinking snake spit.”

Kyungsoo’s still shaking in his chair from his chuckles when Sehun walks out of the living room only to nearly walk straight into a sleepy looking Jongin, whose drooping eyes instantly widen upon recognising the grey hair and sculpted torso.

“Oh, Sehun!” comes Baekhyun’s voice just further down the corridor, seemingly from behind Jongin, coming into sight when he ushers Sehun back into the room. 

Kyungsoo gestures towards the kitchen counter where he’s left Baekhyun and Jongin’s breakfasts, the other witch heading over and holding the plates in his hands.

“What have you done to poor Sehun, Kyungsoo?” he calls, voice echoing around the house in the otherwise peacefully quiet morning. Sehun, with his soft voice and low tones, had been so pleasant on the ears in comparison, wordlessly listening to Kyungsoo’s spontaneous story, sipping on the water. “Why was he going to leave so quickly?”

“I told him about the mawin incident, and asked if he wanted to try.” Kyungsoo snorts again upon glancing over at Sehun flopped against the couch across the room, though his quiet chortles are instantly drowned out by Baekhyun’s crowing laughter from the kitchen.

“Are we telling stories then?” Baekhyun slides into his seat at the dining table next to Kyungsoo with their plate of food, waving Jongin over to share it. “I want to tell the Halloween ones!”

Kyungsoo glances over Baekhyun’s head, raising his eyebrows at Sehun when he catches his eye. Immediately, the werewolf rises from his curled up form on the couch to stroll back to the dining table and join them just as Baekhyun starts telling about the time he and Kyungsoo popped into the town for Halloween and hid behind buildings as they moved shoes and broomsticks to chase after children, muffling their laughter behind their palms. Jongin’s laughing along, using his fork to eat from the plate sitting in the middle of the table, even though he had been equally terrified at the time before realising it must be the work of the two witches.

Baekhyun pauses to explain the human holiday of Halloween to Sehun before launching into telling about the previous year’s Halloween and The Pumpkin Incident, earning a glare from Kyungsoo’s direction. 

“I suppose it wasn’t one of my brightest ideas,” Baekhyun quickly adds. “I didn’t think into it that much, I assumed pumpkins could be hollow and without all the seeds…”

“Have you ever seen a whole pumpkin without seeds?” Kyungsoo retorts, rolling his eyes.

Jongin chortles heartily, shoving another bite into his mouth, but Kyungsoo’s eyes land on Sehun’s wide smile, eyes narrowing into two prettily curved crescents as he glances between the witches with their bickering. And Kyungsoo smiles back when Sehun’s eyes then flicker to him.

  
  
  
  


Admittedly, Kyungsoo should have thought of it. He should have expected the three politely quiet knocks that echo through the living room over the sound of the thunder that shakes the roots of the trees in the surrounding forest. He should have thought of the werewolf, fur plastered to his thin frame with the rain pouring relentlessly down on the town, and he shouldn’t be nearly as surprised as he is upon finding Sehun, water rolling down every inch of his skin and shivering like a drowned rat, at Kyungsoo’s doorstep.

He’s gasping, immediately grabbing Sehun by his shoulders and pulling him into the house. The door slams shut this time, with the force of the gusts of wind blowing outside, but the warmth that instantly blankets them once fully indoors is magical, just like the dancing green flames in all the lanterns and lighting up all the candles in corners around the room. 

Sehun’s curling in to himself, usual perfect posture exchanged for a hunch, pressing his arms into his chest, teeth chattering and droplets still raining down from his eyelashes and wet hair that looks almost black.

Kyungsoo presses in closer, holding him around the waist and letting his fingertips radiate strong pulses of warmth on Sehun’s freezing skin. “Come on,” he murmurs in the quiet of the living room, guiding Sehun down a smaller passage. “Let’s get you in a hot bath.”

He leaves Sehun to sink into the water he fills the bath with, after Kyungsoo had waved his hand in the water for a few moments, letting it warm to a steaming temperature before ushering Sehun in. With more motions of his fingers, Kyungsoo stretches the shirt that he chose out of his own wardrobe for Sehun and likewise with long pajama pants that would be more like shorts on Sehun otherwise-- his tall, muscular human build would never fit in the tiny clothes Kyungsoo owns.

“Kyungsoo?” comes a small voice around the corner, Kyungsoo’s lips quirking up into a smile upon turning around and finding Sehun peering into Kyungsoo’s room. “How do I get rid of the water?”

“You’re done already?” Kyungsoo waves a hand again, Sehun neatly catching the items of clothing in his large hands. “You can wear this, then wait for me in the living room,” he shoots over his shoulder as he sweeps past Sehun out of the room. 

The bath water has turned a slight murky brown, Kyungsoo nodding in satisfaction as he pulls the plug out without needing to get his hands wet-- it means Sehun at least knows how to properly scrub the dirt and mud that would have accumulated on him from running around in the forest-- especially if he’s going to be curling up on Kyungsoo’s couch and bed.

Sehun’s perched on a chair right next to one of the large windows when Kyungsoo strides into the living room-- his human ears twitch, even though they aren’t nearly big and furry enough to catch the sounds of his footsteps, Sehun turning around in his seat from where he had been gazing at the rain pelting down outside. It’s ridiculous, how even though the shirt is enlarged to nearly three times its original size, Sehun’s shoulders are still pulling the material tight over his chest, and Sehun’s ankles are still left exposed and uncovered by the soft material of the pants.

With a quiet chuckle, Kyungsoo moves into the kitchen, letting spoons and mugs fly into the air after him. He’s warming two mugs of milk in both of his hands when a quiet sniff at his shoulder catches his attention, and he smiles once again at Sehun’s big, curious eyes peering over Kyungsoo’s shoulder. 

“What’s that?” he murmurs when Kyungsoo begins letting the spoons stir generous dollops of cocoa powder into the hot milk, and Kyungsoo turns around to face him, shoving a large marshmallow into the werewolf’s slightly agape mouth.

“Hot chocolate,” Kyungsoo smiles, carefully letting the two mugs float into the living room right after them as he heads to the couch. “You’ve never had it before right?”

Sehun’s mutely shaking his head, and Kyungsoo finds himself letting his eyes linger on the slight red glowing flush high on Sehun’s cheeks from the bath as he watches him grasp the mug. His smile only widens at the hushed squeak of pleasant surprise that Sehun lets out upon taking a sip.

“Careful,” Kyungsoo hums, taking his own mug from the air. “It’s hot so--” He breaks off with a sigh as Sehun lets out a loud whine through his nose, sticking his tongue out, staring pitifully down at his hot chocolate. “So blow on it before you drink,” he finishes, leaning over to gently blow in Sehun’s mug. “Like this. It cools it down.”

“But I wanted to get the pink thing,” the wolf complains, alternating between peering down contemplatively at the slowly melting marshmallow and blowing slightly on the liquid, and Kyungsoo shakes his head in disbelief.

Pointing with his index finger, he waits for the bag of marshmallows to fly across the living room to land in his lap, offering the bag to Sehun. “They’re marshmallows,” he explains, watching the werewolf happily stuff one in his mouth.

“I don’t care what they are, I love them.”

Kyungsoo sniggers, only taking another small sip of his own hot drink, nodding at Sehun to try again. “How come you have nowhere to go?” he eventually speaks up, the mug against his lips muffling his words. “In the forest, I mean.”

Sehun turns puzzled green eyes onto him, biting into another marshmallow. “Because we don’t need anywhere to go?”

Kyungsoo snorts. “You obviously do, if you’ve fled here instead.” he takes a marshmallow for himself. “Don’t you wolves live in packs?”

“Not werewolves, no.” Sehun stuffs the rest of the half-eaten marshmallow into his mouth, chewing. “And male wolves and werewolves alike are commonly found alone. They’re too much of a threat to the existing alpha.”

Kyungsoo simply nods, letting silence sit between them, listening to the pattering on the roof of the house for a moment.

He blows on his hot chocolate, his palms keeping it warm. “Does that mean you were kicked out of your pack?”

“No,” Sehun says around a mouthful of marshmallow. “It’s just how we are. There’s no reason for us to live in our original packs, we should go out and make sense of our own life. I lived alone.”

Kyungsoo nods before snatching up the nearly empty bag, immediately sending it back to the kitchen despite Sehun’s whining protests. “No, you can’t have any more! That’s far too many sweet things.” he ploughs on in favour of ignoring Sehun’s pout as he continues sipping on his drink instead. “I mean, it isn’t that different to how witches are.”

He takes Sehun’s mug from his hands, aware of Sehun’s silent, questioning gaze on him as he warms it up with the green flames that spring out of his fingertips.

“Witches have to leave their birthplace for an even distribution of magic across different areas,” he explains, handing Sehun his mug back. “But do these woods not have any other werewolves?”

Sehun, still pouting about his marshmallows, shrugs. “A couple. They usually don’t mind me, because I’m big. So they don’t try to butt their noses into my business.”

“Where do they all go in weather like this then?”

At this, the wolf flashes Kyungsoo a tight-lipped grin. “I guess they’re not lucky enough to get all this this that I get.”

It takes Kyungsoo a moment or two to let a smile split across his lips, raising a hand to let his fingers comb through Sehun’s matted and wild hair. And just as a tester, he gently scratches the crown of his head, chuckling when Sehun hums in pleasure, craning his head up.

By the time both their mugs are drained, Sehun’s resting his cheek on Kyungsoo’s thigh, barely refraining from dozing between Kyungsoo’s fingers running through his hair and Kyungsoo’s soothing voice rattling on about witch customs and superstitions regarding werewolves.

“But you’re just an oversized furball with an acquired taste for human food,” he huffs, and Sehun’s lips twitch into a lazy smile before Kyungsoo’s patting his shoulder. “Alright, up you get. Sleep on the bed, not the couch, it’ll be more comfortable.”

Green eyes flicker open, and Sehun’s sharp eyebrows furrow. “Your bed?”

“Yes, unless you want to squish in with Baekhyun and Jongin.”

“No, you should sleep in your bed. I can go.”

With a raise of his eyebrows, Kyungsoo gestures out the window, which still runs with rain pouring down it. “Are you sure?” at Sehun silence, he simply pushes him up, grabbing him by the wrist. “You need to warm up, because you’ll be sick otherwise. Stop being stubborn and sleep in the bed, I’ll sleep on the couch.”

Even as Sehun’s pushed down the hallway, he’s protesting, struggling against Kyungsoo’s hold on him. “But it’s your bed!”

“But you’ve just been tossed around in a storm--”

“No, I’m glad you’re even letting me stay the night--” with a shove, both Kyungsoo’s palms against a hard chest, Sehun tumbles onto the bed in a heap of long limbs.

“There you go, make yourself comfortable,” Kyungsoo’s bedroom door swings shut on its own as the witch rolls his eyes. “I don’t want you getting a cold after all thi--” with a small indignant squeak, Kyungsoo’s tugged forward by Sehun’s hand that darted out to grab onto Kyungsoo’s arm, falling unceremoniously onto the bed, on top of the werewolf.

His bright green eyes blink in the darkness of the room, before a very  _ wolfish  _ grin makes its way onto Sehun’s face.

“This settles it,” he snorts.

“No, it doesn’t,” Kyungsoo snaps, attempting to struggle and writhe his way off the bed and out of Sehun’s arms, only to be pulled back by a strong grip on his shoulder.

“Yes, it does, it satisfies both of us,” Sehun huffs, somehow strangely close to Kyungsoo’s ear, and the smaller boy jumps in the slightest. “Now can you magic a blanket over or something?”

And the witch isn’t sure what makes him comply, but he does-- maybe it’s Sehun’s soft sigh as he buries his face in Kyungsoo’s pillow, or the warm, heavy weight of Sehun’s arm still on his shoulder. Or even the werewolf’s earthy smell that envelopes both of them until Kyungsoo drifts off too-- just like Sehun’s quiet and deep speaking voice, his heart beat is similarly slow and steady, just like the rest of him, and right next to Kyungsoo’s ear. Interestingly, it mixes well with the drumming of the rain, if the way it all lulls Kyungsoo to sleep is any indication. .

  
  
  
  
  


Kyungsoo glances up, eyes landing on Sehun’s darting gaze, how his focus flits from one flower vase to another. “Yeah?”

“Why do you have so many flowers in the house?”

Kyungsoo lets his eyes roam around the living room from his position on a chair against the wall near the bookshelf, to Sehun’s curled up form on the couch, hugging a throw cushion against himself.

With a shrug, he turns back to his book on rarest potions and their effects. “I like flowers.”

With a similar shrug and a quiet “oh,” Sehun turns back to snuggling into the couch or sipping on whatever drink Kyungsoo placed on the wooden coffee table before him.

They’re similar, remarkably so-- most predominantly in their quiet calmness, both preferring to mill around the house while Baekhyun and Jongin walk around the edges of the forest, darting in and out of the trees, chasing each other before they flop down on the grassy clearings they occasionally stumble upon. 

“What do you do then, when I wasn’t here with you?” he asks, leaning forward on his perch atop a bar stool, elbows propped up on the kitchen counter as he follows Kyungsoo’s movements while he cooks.

Even more than gazing out the window, watching the forest from outside of it, sheltered away from it, Sehun likes to watch Kyungsoo cook, occasionally spout a random question that would startle the poor guy after such a long period of silence.

“How do you know how much of that to add?”

“How much of what?” Kyungsoo calls, back turned to Sehun, holding up his dainty glass jar of table salt. “This? I don’t know, you just learn. You get good at measuring these things without knowing exact amounts.”

Sehun, however, doesn’t always stay over, doesn’t always spend all day in the house with Kyungsoo.

Only if they chat until late, very late after dinner has finished, far past the other two inhabitants of the house have retired to their room.

It would start with Sehun rolling up the sleeves of one of the increasingly many shirts Kyungsoo’s generous enough to enlarge for him, stepping around the kitchen island and up to Kyungsoo’s side at the sink. Kyungsoo then bumps him with his hip whenever Sehun offers to help wash the dishes, because “you cooked, so I’ll clean.”

“It’s not like we have to clean,” Kyungsoo waves him off every time. “They do it themselves, watch.”

Even so, Sehun’s jaw dropping at the washcloth and soap bar, plates, forks, everything dipping in and out of the water like some kind of intricately choreographed routine, which it probably is, he still stands by the sink, listening to the stories Kyungsoo has to tell as Kyungsoo supervises the magic working. 

“Merlin, have you never heard of the two fish in the sky?” Kyungsoo gapes, a cup nearly falling into the sink before he takes control of the washing again.

Sehun blinks, eyebrows furrowing further and further. “Why are there fish in the sky?” he mutters, squinting at Kyungsoo in all his confusion. “And who’s that? Why do you say his name like that?”

Kyungsoo’s bewildered laughter is cut off as Sehun continues.

“Is he stronger than me? Is he better looking than me?”

Kyungsoo flicks a few drops of soapy water in the wolf’s direction, shaking his head. “Merlin? We only say his name as a sort of exclaim,” he explains despite his continuing chuckles. “He was only one of the first, and most well-known, wizards but his name has become an expression of surprise for all magical folk.”

He glances over at Sehun, thick eyebrows rising.

“I’ll have to show you the two fish in the sky,” he murmurs, as he turns back to watching the dishes being scrubbed.

And that’s exactly what he does, grabbing Sehun by the elbow once the last plate slots into place on the drying rack, dragging the werewolf out onto the patio.

“There,” he nods, pulling Sehun in beside him as he leans out over the wooden railing and pointing up with his free hand at the stars above. “The ring of stars there. Follow it down to the big one, that’s where the tail of the two fish join.”

He turns to observe the focused frown sitting on Sehun’s brow, the glimmer of green in his eyes that attempt to outshine the heavens above.

“Do you see it?”

“I guess,” the wolf shrugs, continuing to squint. “It doesn’t look too much like fish to me though.”

With a roll of his eyes, Kyungsoo slumps down, resting his chin on his arms that lie on the railing, gaze still fixed on the stars. “The fish with the intertwined tails are to represent the two areas of witchcraft that the first witches developed, both benign and malicious magic.”

“Malicious magic?” Sehun echoes.

“Bad luck, disease, death, all the things that are in tales of witches,” Kyungsoo chuckles. “Certain potions, transfigurations, things that Baekhyun and I practice on occasion are considered malicious magic, you know.”

Kyungsoo isn’t sure when Sehun turned to watch him instead of the night sky, but he could feel the heavy weight of Sehun’s gaze resting on the side of his face.

“Banishing spells,” he continues, ignoring Sehun’s thoughtful silence. “Casted when the moon is waning to rid yourself of physical things as well as negative habits, situations, illnesses, count as malicious as well, even though not with negative intent.”

Sehun turns away from him, attempting to find the moon in the sky. “What about now then? If witchcraft practices are built on the moon cycle, what about tonight?”

“Don’t you know the moon cycle?” the witch scoffs, and Sehun rolls his eyes.

“We don’t turn at the full moon, if you couldn’t tell already, we can turn whenever we please.”

Kyungsoo pauses, feeling incredibly idiotic with the folklore stereotypes of werewolves that he had grown up with, even though the creatures are included within the magical realm so he honestly should have gathered more knowledge on werewolves. Instead, he clears his throat, speaking up again.

“Well. The moon is waxing right now, and by tradition, constructive spells should be casted to attract things like wealth, success, luck, love.”

When he glances at Sehun again, he finds the werewolf peering at him, eyes flashing in the dark. “By tradition? Do you follow these traditions?”

“Baekhyun might,” Kyungsoo snorts. “I don’t.”

  
  
  


With the amount of times Sehun visits, Kyungsoo keeps a good number of his own clothes stretched to fit Sehun, duplicating them and keeping them ready for Sehun to change into if he shows up in his human form, never daring to walk around the house naked in fear that Kyungsoo wouldn’t let him in again.

And even though he has plenty of clothes, it doesn’t stop Kyungsoo from groaning as he runs up to the two wolves in the garden. Baekhyun mentioned Sehun teaching Jongin to morph in the back, but Kyungsoo didn’t expect to arrive to find the clothes Sehun had been wearing in tattered pieces around him on the slightly overgrown grass.

Jongin’s honey brown eyes are wide, still unfortunately in his half-human, half-wolf form even though Sehun stands in all his long fur and huge build of his wolf body next to him, apparently having forgotten to strip before shifting.

He immediately sits on the grass underfoot as Kyungsoo steps up to him, ears dropping and pitifully whining softly at the heavy sigh Kyungsoo heaves. 

Kyungsoo, pausing for a moment to gather all the tatters scattered around them with a motion of his hand, simply reaches down to ruffle the dark grey fur around Sehun’s ears, feeling the wolf stiffen in apparent pleasant surprise under his fingers.

He dares to slightly lean his head into Kyungsoo’s palm, as he always does when Kyungsoo combs though his fur and hair, thin green eyes slipping shut.

It had taken the witch a whole morning, sitting down in the living room with Sehun on the couch next to him, to comb through the knots in his grey hair-- though it would have taken even longer if he had been in wolf form, with his thick, long coat and all the bits of grass stuck in the matted grey fur.

Despite Kyungsoo’s tugging at his hair Sehun still manages to slightly drift off with his eyes closed, feeling Kyungsoo’s fingers run across his scalp, Kyungsoo’s amusement endless at the extent the wolf seems to enjoy it.

  
  
  


“Kyungsoo hyung,” comes a call from the front door, and Kyungsoo’s jumping up from his comfortable position on the couch to fling open the door for Sehun, trying not to let his mind dwell on the honourific.

“It’s unlocked just come in Sehun-ah,” he calls on his slipping and sliding way down the corridor in his socks. “What’s with calling m--”

He breaks off at the sight of Sehun’s bright smile, at the overwhelming number of stars in Sehun’s eyes so early in the morning as though they never left the night sky, at the barricade of scents hitting him the moment the door opens.

Sehun lifts the small bouquet up to him, blinking in his apparent shyness, Kyungsoo’s eyes immediately dropping down to the assortment of wild flowers the werewolf presents him, carefully tied together with a ring of vine holding the flowers all in place. 

He had thought the wolf had grown out of his habit of barging into the house like he owns the place but apparently not, Sehun quickly slips into the house once Kyungsoo’s slowly raised a hand to hold the flowers with an embarrassed smile hanging gently on his face.

Kyungsoo immediately turns on his heel to follow him, gesturing for the door to close behind him, eyes never leaving the pretty white, pink and yellow petals, with the occasional tiny blue star-shaped flowers scattered within the bunch.

“What’s all this, Sehun?” he smiles, rounding into the living room where Sehun’s seemingly nonchalantly standing by the window, squinting against the morning sunlight that hits his grey hair and makes it shimmer like pure silver. “Is this what you were up to last night?”

Because every single time Kyungsoo and Baekhyun make their trips into the forest, there’s not a single flower on the ground. Infact, they run into rotting carasses left by the wolves in the woods more often than they spy any blossoming plants, and certainly not the ones Kyungsoo’s daintily holding in his hands. His eyes roam over the lit surface of Sehun’s side profile, still refusing to meet Kyungsoo’s gaze-- he must have been hunting down flowers all night for him to have garnered such a bunch.

Though unimpressive in size of the bouquet, Kyungsoo notices the mismatched wild flowers, all different shapes and sizes, some with slightly crumpled and wrinkled petals and some with colours that starkly stand out against the rest of the bunch. Yet Kyungsoo smiles.

He loves flowers.

With so little flowers in these woods to begin with, it’s painfully obvious that the werewolf simply mashed all the flowers he did manage to find in a bunch with no regard for the aesthetics of it all, but Kyungsoo still flits around the living room, re-organising the glass vases on the tables and kitchen counter top.

He doesn’t notice Sehun turning around once Kyungsoo’s attention has gravitated away from him, leaning against the wall to watch the witch fill a long, thin vase with water. Sehun, however, does notice all of Kyungsoo’s soft smiles as he gently places Sehun’s flowers in the vase, notices the little hums of melody leaving the witch’s throat, notices the glint of satisfaction in his eyes as Kyungsoo gazes around, nodding in approval to himself at the placement of his new flowers on the coffee table, in the middle of the room.

Sehun’s eyes similarly redirect to the flowers sitting in the vase, which somehow still enhance the bouquet. It must have been some magic the witch had worked into it-- it’s not possible that a bouquet that Sehun had been initially dissatisfied with suddenly seems so much brighter just by being placed in a glass container. 

But another glance at Kyungsoo’s smile prompts him to return it with a tight-lipped one of his own, considering perhaps that it’s the witch’s radiating expression that lights up the flowers themselves.

Kyungsoo loves flowers, and Sehun loves the satisfied singing of his blood through his body when he glances around the living room to notice that the flowers he brought are undisputedly the more favoured bunch, sitting tall and proud in the sun that streams in from the second set of windows, patterns of light from the glass vase dancing on the wood of the coffee table.

It makes Sehun smile, wide enough for him to turn back to gaze out the window at the garden again to hide it-- it makes Sehun want to run back into the forest stark naked every single night nipping through countless stems with the sharp front teeth of his wolf, constantly shifting between his forms, just to bring home bigger and bigger bouquets for the witch every morning. And perhaps he would have done exactly that, if only there are any flowers left in the forest for him to pick.

  
  


It takes the quiet running of the water, the slight clanking of bowls and dining utensils in the sink that breaks the silence between them for Kyungsoo to slide closer to Sehun, eyebrows raised in curiosity.

“So,” he starts, catching Sehun’s attention and allowing his green eyes to gravitate towards him.

It’s incredibly fascinating, how the werewolf forgets to perfect his transformations between his wolf and human forms, allowing his eyes to remain the same brilliant green of his wolf as his own way of letting down his guard. He had initially ensured his eyes darkened, at least to a very deep green or a brown, and yet Kyungsoo still finds himself very much preferring this startling bright colour that is natural to Sehun’s wolf form.

“What’s with calling me ‘hyung’, all of a sudden?”

Sehun hums, turning away from Kyungsoo, watching a plate hover over to the drying rack. “You’re older than me by a year, it’s only natural.” he eventually says, shrugging, grinning at Kyungsoo’s small noise of surprise. “Because I’m the same age as Jongin, and Baekhyun hyung mentioned your ages.”

Kyungsoo quietens, not sure why he had expected Sehun to be closer to his own age-- and not sure why he expected Sehun to be far more uncomfortable disclosing his age to him. “You never mentioned your age,” Kyungsoo murmurs after a pause, giving a soft voice to his thoughts, eyes roaming Sehun’s face and attempting to gauge his reaction.

“It’s not like I was trying to hide it or anything,” Sehun huffs. “I guess it never quite occurred to me. It’s such a human custom that I assumed it wouldn’t apply-- I mean, you’re… mostly human,” he babbles, tilting his head to one side as Kyungsoo lets out a loud bark of laughter. “Do you mind it?”

“Do I mind that you call me ‘hyung’?” Kyungsoo asks, tone incredulous and eyebrows raised, widening his round eyes. “Are you kidding?”

Sehun’s eyes, upon focusing on the witch, are attempting to blink away his slight confusion. “No?”

“No, I don’t mind,” Kyungsoo chuckles, shaking his head. “At all.”

No, he loves it. Kyungsoo snaps his fingers, the candles around the living room flickering to life with the darkening of the skies outside.

It’s just a simple word, but it’s the fact that they’re finally close enough for Sehun to call him by the title that Kyungsoo loves.

Though that isn’t to say he doesn’t love the other things, like Sehun running around the living room to draw the curtains shut, leaning over the candles he passes by to sniff the scent. He loves all of the small things, the way Sehun peers at Kyungsoo finishing up the dishes, resting his chin down on Kyungsoo’s shoulder-- the way Sehun likes to curl up on the couch next to him while Kyungsoo’s reading another one of his thick witchcraft books that are so ancient that the black lettering on the spine has worn off.

And even when Kyungsoo sometimes wakes up in the middle of the night to find a very large lump of fur in the bed next to him instead of the expanse of Sehun’s pale, smooth skin-- though nothing has been spoken aloud, Kyungsoo loves the new arrangement with Sehun essentially permanently moving in.

Eventually an entire section in Kyungsoo’s closet begins smelling of pine needles and morning dew, dedicated to Sehun and his human clothes considering how the wolf refuses to return to the woods and live wild-- Kyungsoo’s tamed him too well, transfigured a wolf into a puppy so perfectly that he's unable to turn back into the beast he had been before.

“You didn’t make this, did you?”

Kyungsoo’s jaw drops. “Merlin, you’re so picky.”

“I only like the food you make!”

Kyungsoo groans, taking the plate from under Sehun’s nose and putting it aside for Jongin to eat as one of his midnight snacks. Ever since becoming half wolf, the boy’s been eating considerably more than he used to-- perhaps to compensate for the energy usage related to a second physical form.

He isn’t incredibly hard to satisfy-- unlike Sehun, pouting as he puts the spoon he used aside, deciding after one bite that he doesn’t like the cooked food Kyungsoo bought from the store in town just that morning.

“Now I’ve got to cook for you,” Kyungsoo grumbles, shuffling around to shift through the fridge.

Sehun instantly straightens up on the chair he has been perched on next to the bar in the kitchen, gazing at Kyungsoo with gleaming eyes and a furiously wagging tail, poking out from the left leg hole of his shorts from his sudden excitement. Forgetting to keep his wolf in check leads to random wolf attributes, such as his tail, that strangely pop up-- not uncommon, but certainly not experienced by Sehun before.

“Yes, yes please!”

Kyungsoo glances up at that, before squinting at Sehun, peering behind him with narrowed, contemplative eyes. “Is that-- your tail?”

Sehun glances behind him, letting out a quiet squeak of surprise before attempting to angle his body towards Kyungsoo to hide it. “It does that sometimes,” he stutters.

Kyungsoo can't quite help the smile that lights up his face, eyes lingering on Sehun as he moves away from the bar countertop and towards the stove again, chuckling in his amusement under his breath. He will not, however, admit how adorable Sehun’s excitement had been though.

 

“Jongin, you’re making a mess,” Baekhyun chides as he places down his fork, the ears a top Jongin’s messy head of black hair perking up at the mention of his name.

A napkin floating over diagonally across the dining table from Baekhyun’s direction scrubs his face clean.

“See,” Baekhyun continues, leaning over the table with another napkin to Sehun, directly opposite him, and wiping off the blotch of sauce the werewolf wears on the tip of his nose from still sticking his face into his bowl to eat his food. “Sehun was a wild wolf, it’s excusable. You were a human, but your table manners are still so bad.”

Sehun’s laughing, taking the napkin from Baekhyun’s fingers with a good-natured smile and a quiet “thanks hyung, I’ll do it”-- until another is flung straight at his face from the other side of the table.

“Use that one,” Kyungsoo mutters, glancing up from his food to catch Sehun’s bewildered expression-- and Baekhyun’s knowing smirk, earns the odd-eyed witch a napkin in the face too.

He flails, catching the cloth, before shaking his head in his disbelief at Kyungsoo. “What was that for, ‘Soo? Look, I get that you don’t want anyone else touching your little Sehunnie, but you--”

“Shut up,” Kyungsoo snaps, and the napkin that he had flung in Baekhyun’s direction jumps from the tabletop again, adhering itself to Baekhyun’s face. “I’m giving that to you because you gave yours to them, just eat your food.”

Sehun pauses his chewing, glancing between the two witches with a furrow in his brow and confusion written all over his face, unable to understand why Baekhyun appears so gleeful when Kyungsoo is clearly upset at him, for some unfathomable reason. Which is even stranger-- not once all this time did Sehun ever see Kyungsoo look irritated to the point of anger, not even when he ripped his clothes when he morphed. But this time, with Kyungsoo glowering at his own plate of food, pinching Baekhyun hard in the side when the latter’s giggles don’t die down, Sehun’s confused.

Even after all this time, he can’t seem to figure Kyungsoo out. And the more he tries to, the more he feels himself tangled and stuck in the complicated, hypnotic mess that seems an awful lot like the cobweb designs surrounding Baekhyun’s eyes. And it always leads to the same result-- Sehun allowing Kyungsoo to draw him in even more, wanting to be closer, to know him more, allowing the cycle to repeat itself.

  
  
  
  
  


Baekhyun turns his pout towards the black haired boy, and is hugging Jongin’s left arm with his entire body in the next moment, whining pitifully.

It had always been just the two witches in this house of theirs, keeping each other company-- Kyungsoo with his stargazing, occasionally yelling across the house to Baekhyun once he sees something new in the constellations above, and Baekhyun with his flowers, watching them grow and thrive and tickling their petals.

No, with Sehun the large wolf tromping around the house constantly looking for Kyungsoo or hanging off Kyungsoo and hogging all of his attention, it leaves Baekhyun sticking himself to Jongin’s side, endlessly pestering the other wolf in his attempts to alleviate his sulky bitterness at it all.

And it works like magic every time-- Baekhyun’s ready and armed with hugs and ear scratches for whenever Jongin comes crawling back to him in the back yard after unsuccessfully morphing yet again. He’d lie down on the grass next to him, burying his nose into Jongin’s thick, silky black hair, giggling when Jongin’s ears flick.

Or he’d call for Jongin, the two of them heading into the woods, strolling between the trees and hearing the crunch of the leaves under their feet, Baekhyun working his magic on the shrubs and smaller trees that are struggling near the forest floor. He’d watch, a small smile on his face, as Jongin noses around the tree trunks, allowing his wolf senses to heighten as he attempts to sniff out every scent there is in the area, eyes bright and intrigued and ears pricked for leaves rustling or the bird song over their heads.

And even though Baekhyun loves to ramble on and on about the plants and grasses they come across when they’re lying side by side in a small clearing in the forest, Jongin always dozes off from his talking. But watching Baekhyun actually play with the trees and plants is a different story.

Jongin’s big golden eyes are always widened as he watches vines curl themselves gently around Baekhyun’s finger, or how the witch speaks and sings to the tall trees that stretch high above their heads.

“I’m a plant witch,” he had smiled upon noticing the awe in Jongin’s eyes. “Kyungsoo’s all about the moon and stars, but I love the stuff on Earth more.” 

The explanation does nothing to help the awestruck look in Jongin’s eyes everytime he watches Baekhyun sings to the flowers growing in the pots around the house or the herbs in the garden.

“They like it,” he had said before resuming the melody, smile turning from gentle to sheepish when he notices Jongin standing in the doorway with his jaw dropped.

Jongin needed to force himself to swallow back a ‘ _ I like it too _ ’, unwilling to both interrupt Baekhyun’s beautiful, hypnotising voice and unwilling to risk exposing himself to the witch and indicate how completely and entirely he’s got Jongin under his spell. 

Baekhyun’s eyes widen, gnawing on a nail painted black between his teeth as he watches the grey blur that is Sehun’s wolf form as he runs in a lap around Jongin, before the werewolf shifts back, the entire process over in the blink of an eye and smooth as water.

His odd pink eye nearly pops right out of its eye socket when Jongin pauses before his nose elongates into a furry black snout. Sehun’s shouting encouragements, Baekhyun watching from the edge of the back yard with his mouth hanging open as Jongin’s, slowly but surely, begins to be covered in thick, glossy black fur, lengthening into his much larger wolf form.

They had only ever seen Jongin’s wolf once, before Kyungsoo had attempted the reversal spell-- it’s not nearly enough to prepare Baekhyun for the large black wolf that stares right back at him, even though the glimmering amber eyes remain the same.

Jongin seems to stretch his limbs, in his new form, the wolf’s stiff legs straightening for a moment before he turns, slowly making his way over to Baekhyun, the witch running across the grass to meet him.

“Jongin!” he gasps, kneeling on the grass despite the plants tickling his knees, both hands reaching up to cup the wolf’s face-- and when a smile breaks out on Baekhyun’s face, a similar smile full of sharp canines and lolling pink tongue appears on the wolf’s face as the pair of gold eyes gaze back at the witch’s.

A loud bark catches both of their attention, heads turning to find Sehun yet again in his wolf form, crouching on the grass with his eyes set on Jongin, tongue poking out of his jaws the slightest. When Jongin leaves Baekhyun’s side, head crooked as he regards the other wolf, Sehun pounces, rolling the slightly smaller black wolf into the grass.

With a wide grin, Baekhyun leaves to dash into the house, shouting for Kyungsoo, dragging the other witch out into the backyard to watch the two werewolves tussle on the ground, swiping slightly at each other with their paws, Sehun occasionally darting forward to nip the back of Jongin’s hind legs.

Baekhyun giggles, even as Kyungsoo leans forward. Sehun’s larger, grey wolf form straightens up, ears perking at Kyungsoo’s shout of “be careful with him, Sehun-ah, don’t play too rough”, but Baekhyun’s all amused smiles and laughter as he watches them, knowing it’s Sehun’s own way to help Jongin familiarise himself with his wolf form.

It becomes a habit, a constant in each of their routines, but so prominent in Baekhyun’s daily life that it rivals the place of flowers and plants in his life-- stand beside the herb patch and watch the wolves playing everyday. He’s all smiles when Jongin comes running up to him on all four paws to tackle him to the ground to hover over him, licking his face like a huge, overgrown dog.

But the witch is laughing loudly anyway, fingers tangled in Jongin’s black fur, arms around the wolf’s neck.

Their forest walks aren’t any different, still exploring the outskirts of the forest during the day, except Jongin always likes to run ahead of Baekhyun, duckin in and out of the undergrowth, ignoring Baekhyun’s shouts from behind him, complaining that his “little human legs can’t catch up!”

But Jongin still always allows Baekhyun to use his flank as a very furry, fluffy pillow to rest his head on to rest in their usual clearing before heading back home-- and like magic, everytime without fail when Baekhyun sings with his gorgeously soft and gentle voice, with his eyes gazing up at the trees that stretch overhead, he always feels the rise and fall of Jongin’s side even out as he drifts off to the rustle of leaves and the heavenly way Baekhyun’s voice rises into the air.

  
  
  


It's strange, Kyungsoo frowns as he ducks back into the house from where he let his eyes sweep over the garden before concluding that a huge, all-black wolf is not in the backyard. He's been looking for Jongin to tell him to go with Sehun on a run because of how energetic the taller wolf seems to be-- the exercise would do them both good, if only he could find Jongin. 

He gives a few knocks on their bedroom door as warning before he's inviting himself in-- only to duck right back out, finding Jongin lying on Baekhyun's bed, the witch straddling his waist and hovering over Jongin to lick into his mouth, both their shirts in crumpled messes around the bed. 

Kyungsoo hesitates half way back down the hallway despite his absolute bewilderment at it all, attempting to mentally weigh whether he should call out an apology for barging in-- and yet, with how engrossed they were in each other, there's a chance they didn't even notice Kyungsoo at all as well.

“Hyung?”

Kyungsoo's head snaps up, acknowledging Sehun peering at him with a small nod as he makes his way to him. 

“Did you know that Jongin and Baekhyun are together?” he blurts, striding past Sehun and into the kitchen. 

“I thought they’d been together for a while now,” Sehun hums, seemingly confused. “Didn’t you know, hyung?”

“No?”

“I smell them all over each other like all day everyday.”

Kyungsoo whacks him, fingers hitting the toned, heavily muscled stomach of the werewolf without turning away from the chopping board. “Sehun, I’m human, as if I could smell them.”

“You’re a witch, not human.”

“The point is I’m not a wolf, Sehun, I couldn’t smell them on each other.”

Sehun leans against the countertop of the kitchen, arms crossing over his chest as he watches Kyungsoo. “Do you sleep like a rock then? Because I’ve definitely heard them too. Baekhyun is very loud, hyung.”

“You also have weird wolf hearing.”

“I think you’re just a deep sleeper,” the wolf chortles, turning away-- his ears twitch though, as if on command, before telling himself that it’s not polite to eavesdrop on the couple’s conversation behind the closed doors of their bedroom.

Because Baekhyun’s sitting up and giggling, ignoring Jongin’s pawing at his chest in an adorable attempt to get him to stop laughing over Kyungsoo walking in on them and continue kissing him.

“At least we don’t have to explain it to him now,” the witch grins, and Jongin manages a similar smile back before leaning up and pressing a lingering kiss to those lips, to the mole just above those lips.

Baekhyun hums, leaning further in towards Jongin again, tilting his head just the slightest. It makes Jongin’s eyelashes flutter against Baekhyun’s cheek, heart beat contrastingly thundering rapidly in his chest despite the steady, slow way they kiss each other, the slow way they allow their lips to move against each other’s. 

And yet again, the trailing of Baekhyun’s index finger down Jongin’s torso doesn’t only ignite rushes of warmth down his bare skin, but sets aflame his blood that runs under his skin-- as though the reactions of his body to each one of Baekhyun’s touches and kisses are rapid, coursing through him, and yet he still prefers to kiss him slow to savour the witch’s taste.

If Jongin’s scent is musky when Baekhyun detaches himself from Jongin’s lips to lick a trail down the wolf’s neck to where he stops at his sculpted collarbone, sticking his nose against Jongin’s bronzed skin, then Baekhyun tastes sweet-- he smells sweet too, if the way that Jongin inhales lungfuls of his scent is any indication.

He smells like the slight sweetness of grass, tastes like nectar that flowers offer lucky insects. Jongin groans softly, eyes fluttering open for a moment to pull Baekhyun back up so he could taste him again, just because he misses his taste in the mere few moments after they stopped kissing. 

Cupping Baekhyun’s face to kiss him harder makes Jongin see stars in a similar way to what Kyungsoo sees when he looks up at the night sky-- the future, predictions of the future, and magic.

The future, only because he can’t quite imagine what life looks like without the inhabitants of this household. The witches have been with Jongin nearly all his life, and pulling away to search Baekhyun’s pink iris, he doesn’t plan on changing that ever, no matter what life has in store for him.

Nothing could get wilder than being turned into a big, black wolf, anyway.

  
  


Sehun hums, sticking his nose into the steam rising from the pot, inhaling deeply.

“That smells so good,” he mumbles, and Kyungsoo chuckles, gently pushing him away so he could stir the beef stew some more. “How come you’re so good at cooking? Can’t you witches do it by magic?”

As if to prove a point, Kyungsoo releases his grip on the ladle, letting it stir the stew by itself. “Yes, but apparently, it doesn’t taste as good if done by magic. And cooking is kind of similar to potion making, if you think about it,” he snorts, sprinkling the rings of spring onion onto the top of the finished dish. “Chuck a bunch of ingredients into a pot, stir it a bit, watch it bubble away. It’s all the same.”

Sehun goes quiet for a moment in apparent contemplation. When he does speak up, Kyungsoo’s already spooning the food into four bowls.

“So if Baekhyun hyung is bad at cooking, does that mean he’s also bad at potions?”

“Most definitely,” Kyungsoo chortles. “He’s just not the best at magic in general. He tries his best, but he doesn’t quite get it straight off the wand. I have no idea why Jongin would date him after all that, but here we are.”

“So something did happen with Jongin.” When Kyungsoo raises his eyebrows questioning, humming quietly, Sehun shrugs. “He’s not a real wolf, is he?”

“How did you know?”

“He doesn’t howl when he comes.”

Sehun watches as Kyungsoo chokes on his words and coughs, sputtering, quickly turning away from the bowls for dinner as the tips of his ears rapidly redden.

It brings the slightest smile to Sehun’s lips, watching Kyungsoo’s confused, flustered stuttering before he decides to speak up again.

“No but I do know these things,” he snorts. “I can tell.”

“Baekhyun did it. He turned Jongin into a wolf and I tried to turn him back,” Kyungsoo babbles rapidly, clearing his throat. “But he turned out like this because I wasn’t able to practice the reverse spell before using it on him. It probably wasn’t as effective as it could have been.”

“Baekhyun? How did Baekhyun do it?”

“No clue, I don’t think he meant to.” Kyungsoo quickly turns away, twirling a finger in the air for the four bowls to rise from the countertop and hover their way through the kitchen and out into the dining room.

“So,” Sehun starts, absolutely despising the silence from Kyungsoo and desperate to break it with a change of topic. Making Kyungsoo laugh with the joke had been the intention, not this strange static in the air between them, where neither of them know what to do or say-- this isn’t what Sehun is used to, not in this household ever since he started visiting. “What kind of potions do you make?”

“I can make a lot of potions.” the way in which Kyungsoo seems eager to change topics irritates Sehun just as much, and yet he doesn’t quite understand himself why it constantly nags at the back of his mind.

“What’s your favourite?” Sehun props his hand up from where his elbow is resting on the countertop. “I want to see what a potion is like.”

Kyungsoo pauses, turning to glance over his shoulder at the werewolf, an amused glint in the corner of his eye. “I don’t know, but I’m really good at love potions. Want to try?”

Sehun becomes the one with his words stuck in his throat, blinking stupidly at Kyungsoo’s back as the witch turns back to the pots and pans infront of him. Strangely enough, it alleviates all the uncertainty that had clouded Sehun’s chest from Kyungsoo’s previous awkwardness, this time finding himself flushing all the way across his cheekbones.

“No thank you,” he manages to stutter out, eyes darting away from Kyungsoo. “Maybe something else.”

It’s Kyungsoo’s soft, distinguishable laughter that brings his attention back to him, the witch slightly shaking his head in his apparent amusement at all of Sehun’s reactions, turning the tables over.

The potion that Kyungsoo sets infront of him in the evening after dinner, that had been left bubbling away during the meal, is a curious pale orange in colour, transparent when Sehun holds up the glass to the light, watching the small amount of the liquid swish around.

“It tastes like citrus,” Kyungsoo had encouraged, watching as Sehun tips it back into his throat, tongue darting out to lick around his lips as he swallows it in a distinctively canine way.

In hindsight, giving Sehun an energising potion in the middle of the night perhaps wasn’t one of Kyungsoo’s brightest ideas.

He’s holding the back door open, yelling for Sehun into the night and attempting to squint to peer into the gloom of the forest where he let the huge wolf had run out into to hopefully let out some of his sudden boost of energy. A moment later he spies the green shining orbs in the darkness-- but then Sehun breaks out into a silent run through the trees, pelting towards the house.

Kyungsoo’s eyes widen in alarm with the sheer speed that the wolf is moving at, nearly flying over the grass under his paws, quickly holding the door open and moving out of the way. Indeed, not long after, Sehun had crossed the distance from the trees, thundering into the house as Kyungsoo closes the door behind him with a snap of his fingers.

Even as he attempts to sit still as Kyungsoo moves around him, the shifting of his thick, fluffy tail and the constant moving of Sehun’s very large paws nearly trip the poor witch, who turns around with every intent on scolding Sehun. But noticing his restless shuffling on the wooden flooring of the house even as he tries his best to sit still, Kyungsoo eventually sighs into his palm, absolutely regretting everything about that potion.

Especially in the dead of night, Kyungsoo laying in bed and attempting to go to sleep despite Sehun’s endless tossing and turning and fidgeting next to him.

“Sehun, I swear,” he snaps, sitting up.

“I’m sorry,” the werewolf squeaks, yet still continues to shake his right leg.

“I’m going to go sleep on the couch.”

At this, he sits up too, reaching out to grab Kyungsoo by the wrist, giving a gentle tug. “No, if anything, I’ll sleep on the couch. You should--”

He breaks off with a small huff as Kyungsoo’s weight lands squarely on his broad chest, knocking Sehun back down onto the pillows.

Kyungsoo simply watches as Sehun rapidly blinks eyes that glow a bright green in the dark room at him, lingering for a moment to feel the quick rise and fall of the werewolf’s chest underneath him.

It takes him a moment, but he eventually rises from his position, leaving Sehun laying there still stunned and motionless as Kyungsoo grabs his own pillow and blanket.

With a small smile, knowing that Sehun could see him perfectly in the lack of light, he bids Sehun goodnight, shutting their shared bedroom door with a soft thud and heading to the couch.

In consideration of it all, it’s only fair that it’s Kyungsoo that moves out for the night, for not knowing better before choosing an inappropriate potion to give him, though he is most confident with his energising potions.

Kyungsoo smiles the slightest, snuggling into the pillow, at the perfumes of the flowers around the living room-- and yet he’s still missing the subtle scent of pine that sticks around Sehun, he’s still missing the warmth of another body right beside him even in hot weather, and he’s missing the quiet sounds of the werewolf’s breathing sounding right next to his ear.

He wouldn’t be surprised if he tosses and turns just as much as Sehun does, even though Kyungsoo’s not under the influence of any energising potion. Perhaps just the thought of Sehun alone is all he needs to keep him lying awake for hours on end.

  
  
  
  


“Thank you,” Kyungsoo hums as he takes the bowl of carrots Sehun’s just washed for him, smiling in that usual gentle way that never fails to tug on just the right heart strings for Sehun. “Now to chop these up.”

Sehun watches, only eager and incredibly enthusiastic in the way his gaze rests on Kyungsoo’s hands as they work, chopping up the carrots.

Kyungsoo only smiles at the way those eyes constantly flicker to him for approval, Sehun’s sheer willingness to learn to cook showing in every single one of the tasks Kyungsoo asks him to carry out, whether it be to pick some mint leaves from the garden or to wash vegetables.

It’s because of how much Sehun loves human food, but it’s also because he’s learning to do something he knows Kyungsoo really loves that Sehun loves the entire process so much-- standing in the kitchen with Kyungsoo, their voices carrying over the sound of running water as they talk about anything and everything. But it’s also Sehun’s hope to maybe cook for Kyungsoo one day too, to give the witch a well-deserved rest, that he’s so incredibly excited with everything he does-- especially all of Kyungsoo’s encouragements.

“Is this enough?” he holds up his handfuls of fresh mint leaves, eyes expectant as Kyungsoo glances over the bunch.

“Yes that’s great, thank you Sehunnie,” Kyungsoo smiles, reaching up to briefly ruffle the messy head of grey hair, completely missing the way Sehun nearly shakes in delight at the praise and the satisfaction of simply doing something right, getting somewhere.

What Kyungsoo most definitely does not miss is the way Sehun’s lips stay tweaked up in that small smile of his even as he cuts the tomatoes for Kyungsoo, bustling around the kitchen already, a look of pure focused concentration sitting on his thin, perfectly sculpted brows. The rush of warmth and softness that spreads throughout his body from spending far too long staring is unexpected but not unwelcome, Kyungsoo simply standing there and continuing to admire the werewolf.

He flashes Sehun a smile when he turns to ask Kyungsoo to check on his chopping, Kyungsoo’s eyes gravitating to the rolled up sleeves of Sehun’s shirt that exposes his forearms before watching the surprisingly nimble way Sehun’s large hands work. Despite his large build, with his incredibly wide shoulders and broad chest, the wolf is elegant and delicate in the way he moves-- his smile is slight, and yet still manages to light up the kitchen they stand in anyway.

Then those piercing eyes are shifting towards him, pinning him down with the strength of a wolf’s muscled shoulders pressing down on its prey-- and Kyungsoo finds himself helpless, completely unable to tear his eyes away.

This is awkward-- Kyungsoo swallows nervously-- staring into Sehun's light coloured eyes is awkward because his eyes and their shade of green are so utterly captivating and he’s caught completely red handed staring for far too long.

But rather than cock an eyebrow at him in his usual questioning way, Sehun simply turns the rest of his body towards Kyungsoo, giving him the entirety of his attention  as he slides closer inch by inch-- he blinks slow and carefully, just like the way he slightly bends down.

But then there's a warmth on Kyungsoo's lips, a softness pressing against his mouth, and Kyungsoo's entire body  _ melts  _ with the force of it all despite Sehun's gentlest movements.

His lips part in a silent gasp, eyelashes fluttering madly against Sehun’s cheek, and he's suddenly reaching up to loop his arms around Sehun’s neck in his attempts to keep him there, too keep kissing him and hopefully never stop.

The slap of the realisation crashes down upon Kyungsoo like a bucket of water emptied over his head, washing him in rushes of heat with the eager way Sehun continues lapping at his lips. He could only return Sehun's kisses with equal intensity as though to make up for lost time-- to make up for all those nights of sharing a bed and not kissing, not holding each other the way they are now, with Sehun leaning down and wrapping Kyungsoo as tight against his body as he could with his long limbs around Kyungsoo's torso.

But this is all precisely what Kyungsoo loves so much, tangling his fingers in thick, grey hair, drawing quiet hums and gasps from Sehun with his occasional tugging at his scalp.

Kyungsoo hesitates before slowly and gently pushing forwards, carefully driving Sehun back against the kitchen counter to kiss him more deeply, tilt his head to a different angle to elicit even more of the pleasured noises from the werewolf.

He chases forward the slightest, leaning forward, when Kyungsoo pulls away-- And despite all of Sehun's attempts to finish what they started, Kyungsoo only chuckles in apparent amusement at the wolf as he supervises the eating utensils setting themselves onto the dining table.

Though he does lean in to press a short, sweet kiss to Sehun's lips before Sehun could realise, feeling the back of his neck and his ears bloom with heat to match his flustered smile that he attempts to hide.

  
  
  
  


“Seems like you two had fun last night.”

Kyungsoo startles, turning his hugely widened eyes to the other witch who slides up to Kyungsoo on the counter, winking.

And yet, at this hour in the morning with breakfast half made sitting in front of Kyungsoo, somehow the only things he could think of are Sehun’s heady pants in the night, hot breath that fanned against Kyungsoo's lips-- Sehun, with his legs wrapped around Kyungsoo's waist and heels digging into his back. Sehun, with all of his sharp canine whines that escaped him, completely and utterly floating in the haze of pleasure that Kyungsoo’s every move basks him in.

Sehun, who had craned his head up, exposing his pale neck littered with evidence of Kyungsoo's kisses, and let out raspy, broken howls at the ceiling when he finally came. His entire body had stiffened, every single muscle in his well-defined abdomen contracting with the force of the shudders that ran through him.

Sehun had taken a moment before cracking his eyes open-- and when he did, Kyungsoo froze at the brilliant emerald green slits that peered back at him.

Too lost in the bliss of it all, he had let part of his wolf go, slackening the control he had over his body. And it's his eyes, that stunning pair of eyes, that returned to their original form.

Only now does Kyungsoo think of Sehun mentioning Jongin not howling when he climaxes, and only now does it make more sense.

“How did you know??” he gapes, hurriedly turning back to finish cooking breakfast and giving his best attempt at ignoring Baekhyun. 

Baekhyun laughs as brightly as the morning sun streaming in through the living room windows, hopping off the counter. “For starters, it was a long time coming. Secondly, Sehun is loud,” he chortles, delighting in the way the back of Kyungsoo's neck flushes. “Thirdly, you have some marks you didn’t cover up. If you didn’t want people to know you should’ve tried a little harder, Kyungsoo.”

Kyungsoo glances down at himself, spluttering. “Well I-- it’s not like I was trying to hide anything from you...”

“I’m not totally oblivious to the obvious like you though,” Baekhyun sing-songs, stretching and letting purple sparks dance in a perimeter all around his body with the action.

It's when the plates of food have just been divvied out when the door to Kyungsoo's bedroom swings open slowly with a creak, Sehun shuffling towards them. He lifts a hand to rub at his face with his eyes barely open and grey hair that appears to have a silver sheen in the sunlight an absolute mess atop his head-- and very naked. Very much completely naked.

Before Kyungsoo could tell him off for it, however, he's burying his face into the side of Kyungsoo's neck, wrapping long arms around the witch from behind and blatantly ignoring Kyungsoo's flustered squeak in surprise.

And just as Baekhyun’s finished setting up the table with a final wave of his hand, the fourth plate of bacon gliding smoothly into his own position at the table, a head of black hair with corresponding ears makes its way into the room, wordlessly nuzzling into Baekhyun's shoulder. 

“Look at the two new lovebirds, Jonginnie,” Baekhyun coos, raising a hand to attempt to fix Jongin's hair. “Aren’t they so cute?” he teases, thriving on the redness of Kyungsoo’s cheeks.

Jongin leans forwards the slightest, face scrunching up in disgust after sniffing the air. “Gross, you two stink, you nasties.”

Kyungsoo shuffles away from him the best he could with a very lanky, very heavy body still resting on his back. “No, no sniffing, don’t do that. It’s weird when you do it.”

Jongin rolls his eyes at him, hiding a yawn behind a hand. “Is this because only Sehun’s an authentic werewolf, please.”

“I’m still not used to you being all wolfy.”

“You said wolfy!” Baekhyun pipes up from where he had already seated himself in his spot at the table, mouth full of food.

“You’re all so loud I’m too tired,” Sehun mumbles against Kyungsoo’s shoulder, seemingly never releasing his strong grip around Kyungsoo’s waist, ignoring the crowing from Baekhyun that he set off.

“How hard did you go?” the other witch turns to Kyungsoo, wide teasing grin set on his face and Kyungsoo flicks his finger, sending a bottle of tomato sauce at Baekhyun lest he catch Kyungsoo's flustered expression and tease him for the rest of their existence about it.

Instead, Kyungsoo shuffles back into their bedroom with Sehun in tow, tucking him back into bed and promising he’ll get his breakfast later, promising cuddles with a kiss dropped onto Sehun's forehead. 

  
  
  
  


Kyungsoo’s head snaps up before he’s rolling his eyes at the loud howl that rips from Sehun’s throat.

The sound trails on, with the werewolf pointing his nose up at the ceiling of the living room.

“Are you a wolf or a puppy?”

At Kyungsoo’s voice, Sehun cuts off with a smug grin-- Now that he’s got his attention, Sehun shuffles over to where Kyungsoo sits on the couch and climbs all over him, slotting his long legs in to tangle with Kyungsoo’s.

“You’re definitely a puppy.”

“I’m a wolf,” Sehun weakly protests. “I’m not one of those wimpy, pretty dogs that follow the humans around everywhere.”

Kyungsoo rolls his eyes, petting Sehun’s hair and letting the silky dark grey strands run between his fingers. “Are you sure? You sure act like it sometimes.”

Sehun pouts at that, burying his face into Kyungsoo’s chest and glancing sideways at the pages of the spell book Kyungsoo had put aside. “I would never.”

Even so, Kyungsoo chuckles when he stands up to move to the kitchen, figuring that he wouldn’t get any reading done with Sehun whining for attention anyway-- He turns, the usual amused gleam in his eyes, with Sehun immediately following on his heel to the kitchen too. “Oh? What happened to not being a ‘wimpy dog that follow the humans around everywhere’?”

“I’m not wimpy, and you’re not human,” Sehun grumbles at Kyungsoo’s quiet laughter.

Kyungsoo’s smile only grows softer, understanding perfectly-- it’s only natural for Sehun, a werewolf born and raised, to have a higher chance to be with a witch. He never asked Sehun for the specific reason why he determinedly makes the distinction between human and witch so clear, but it’s not hard to suspect that it’s because he would definitely have no chance with Kyungsoo if he was a simple human.

“Alright baby, whatever you say.”

Sehun tries his hardest to show no reaction, to keep himself together, at the endearment, he really does-- and yet his traitorous tail, popping out and swishing rapidly in his delight, gives him away. Despite Sehun’s immediate initial embarrassment, shyly whining at Kyungsoo, the witch pecks his lips, chuckling anyway. “How cute, you can’t hide your reactions to anything.”

Sehun whines, burying his head in Kyungsoo’s neck and holding onto him even though Kyungsoo needs to cook, attempting to shuffle around the kitchen with Sehun completely latched onto him.

Kyungsoo turns his head a little to glance behind him, at the werewolf hanging onto his back, muttering a quiet “Sehun, baby, I need to cook.”

“You can just do it with magic, I want cuddles.”

“But it never turns out as good, are you sure about that?”

“Cuddles are more important.”

“I beg to differ,” Kyungsoo sighs, before dropping a kiss onto Sehun’s forehead anyway.

It’s all too familiar, Sehun enveloping the small witch in his long limbs and broad chest-- though even in his wolf form, he plops his head down on Kyungsoo’s lap in his quest for attention despite the head of his wolf being nearly two times the size of Kyungsoo’s.

The said witch looks down at him incredulously, but begins running his fingers over the broad forehead of Sehun’s wolf anyway, and the soft, fluffy fur at the base of his ears.

And like magic, it never fails to put the werewolf to sleep, green eyes slipping shut under Kyungsoo’s gentles caresses-- though he always fights to stay awake so that he doesn’t miss the soft kiss Kyungsoo drops on his big leathery nose right before he drifts off.

  
  
  


Snarls break out somewhere in front of them in the trees ahead, and Kyungsoo sighs, leaving Baekhyun behind to finish his work on fixing a large tree strangled by a vine.

He strides ahead, peering through the mess of towering trunks before his slight frown is turned upside down.

His big, grey wolf is pinned down by a mass of black fur, growling playfully at Jongin before he’s writhing out of his grip, sending fallen leaves that he laid on spraying out on the forest floor in every direction as he struggles free. Sehun’s snapping his jaws and baring his mouthful of terrifyingly big teeth, lowering into a crouch and springing at the other wolf, but Jongin’s setting off at a run through the woods and yet Sehun’s hot on his heels in pursuit.

“I don’t want to say I told you Jongin needs wolfy friends,” Kyungsoo turns at Baekhyun’s voice, the other witch daintily stepping over a root that juts out across their path on the forest floor. “But I told you so.”

Kyungsoo snorts, rolling his eyes despite the fond smile settling in and making itself at home on his lips.

He had had those sharp teeth bared at him when he didn’t stop flicking Sehun’s fluffy ears with the end of a soup ladle while Sehun had been resting on the couch after an afternoon run in the woods with Jongin-- Sehun had growled low in his throat in irritation, which Kyungsoo ignored. But baring his teeth at the witch had did the trick, startling Kyungsoo enough to stop the flicking-- but not even a minute later, Sehun’s butting his snout into Kyungsoo’s stomach, apologetic whines replacing the warning growls.

“Jongin-ah!” Baekhyun calls, and as if on cue, the black wolf tears through the undergrowth towards them, with Sehun still dashing after him.

Jongin runs a loop around Baekhyun, amber eyes glinting and tongue lolling between his sharp canines, delighting in Baekhyun’s giggles as Jongin’s thick fur brushes against his legs.

Sehun correspondingly bounds up to Kyungsoo, stopping at the last moment to stand up on his hind legs, placing his very large front paws flat on Kyungsoo’s stomach so that he could stand slightly taller than the witch’s eye level.

He nuzzles forward, long tongue licking at Kyungsoo’s chin before the witch is pushing him off.

“Get off,” he’s saying, prying Sehun’s paws with his untrimmed claws off him. “That actually hurts, don’t do that!”

With a whine, Sehun drops to all four paws, sitting down in front of his witch and looking absolutely pitiful as he blinks up at him. He cranes his neck up, nosing in concern around Kyungsoo’s belly button, only for the witch to gently slap his snout away.

“Go off now,” Kyungsoo smiles, ruffling the fur at the top of Sehun’s head. “Jongin’s waiting. Go play.”

But when they glance over to Jongin, they find the black wolf sitting down in front of Baekhyun, who’s leaning down and cupping Jongin’s head in his hands and pressing kisses all over his furry face. Jongin’s eyes are slitted and closing, absolutely lapping up as much of the affection as he could, the tip of his fluffy tail switching in his delight.

Sehun glances back at Kyungsoo, who extends a hand to stroke the side of the wolf’s face-- and with the way Sehun looks up at him, tilting his head to lean into Kyungsoo’s palm, Kyungsoo feels the thuds of his chest expand to resonate throughout his entire body until his whole being is shaking with the strength of what he feels for Sehun.

He crouches down to Sehun’s eye-level this time, grinning wide at how the wolf immediately dives forward to nestle his head against the crook of Kyungsoo’s neck, fur brushing against the side of Kyungsoo’s face. It makes the witch giggle, burying his nose into the thick fur at Sehun’s neck that smells woody like bark, like the tall pines that surround them, yet also the fresh tint of grass. 

He pulls back to stare into the glittering, green eyes that he loves so much with his own soft smile, knowing that if Sehun isn’t in his wolf form, he would be most certainly mirroring his expression. Kyungsoo leans forward, pressing the tip of his nose to Sehun’s big black one, feeling the inhales and exhales of the wolf against his face.

When he draws back, Sehun leans up to lick his cheek, blinking slowly at him with his tongue hanging out of his jaws, like any other very satisfied, very loving, very over sized dog. Kyungsoo laughs, wiping the saliva off his cheek with the back of his hand to wipe it on the fur on Sehun’s back.

But even so, he leans forward to kiss the side of Sehun’s snout, right above his upper jaws, anyway. 

 

**Author's Note:**

> LATE CHRISTMAS GIFT/EARLY NEW YEARS GIFT TO COMEBAEKHOME I LOVE YOU BUB  
> I HOPE YOU ENJOYED!  
> this would definitely be a good halloween fic but alas..........  
> yes this took me so so so so so long but hey, it's only 4 days after christmas soooooo  
> pls forgive me, this fic wasn't edited, like at all, which is sCANDALOUS for me lmao i NEED to edit my writing but I've just been trying to finish this ASAP so it's not edited so PLEASE FORGIVE ANY TYPOS/MISTAKES/BAD WRITING/THE WHOLE THING just forgive it okay  
> but yes I hope you like! love u comebaekhome my fave bub <33333
> 
> talk to me on social media!  
> IG: @djjdkim  
> tumblr: @djjdkim  
> if you want writing prompts for exo: @xoxoprompts  
> Twitter (for writing updates): @djjdkim


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